Faasos parent Rebel Foods gets $125m from Coatue, others

Rebel Foods, which owns and operates multi-brand cloud kitchen platforms, has raised $125 million (about ₹864 crore) in a fresh round of funding, led by New York-based technology-focused hedge fund Coatue Management.

The Series-D round, which is reported to have valued the nine-yearold company at $500-525 million and closed last month, also saw capital injection by Indonesian ride-hailing firm Go-Jek and Goldman Sachs.

The closure of the equity financing round was first reported by Bloomberg. ET was the first to report, on May 5, that the Mumbai-headquartered Rebel Foods, which operates nine in-house brands such as Faasos, Behrouz Biriyani, Oven Story, Firangi Bake and Mandarin Oak, was in talks to raise $75-100 million in fresh funding.

Queries sent by ET to the CEO of Rebel Foods, Jaydeep Barman, did not elicit any response till press time. In an earlier conversation with ET, Barman had said that the company, which currently has about 200 cloud kitchens spread across 15 cities in the country, will be investing another $30-40 million in infrastructure, expansion and automation, while also doubling down on its in-house brands. The development comes even as the company has begun to expand overseas, in markets such as the UAE and Indonesia for starters.

Cloud kitchens like Faasos earn better margins than do food aggregators such as Swiggy and Zomato and brick-and-mortar restaurants because they sell their own brands and they can utilise one central kitchen to service multiple brands.

A $5 million investment in Rebel Foods by Go-Jek, through its investment arm Go Ventures, last month is believed to have been part of a partnership that could see Rebel Foods set up around 100 cloud kitchens in Indonesia. Coatue Management, which manages assets of about $16 billion, is investing about $70 million for a 14.07% stake in Rebel Foods, according to documents filed by the company and accessed by business intelligence platform paper.vc. The fund has invested through an entity called Coatue PE Asia 25 LLC, and shareholder and investment agreements were signed on July 12.

The company also counts Sequoia Capital, Lightbox, Ru-Net, Sistema Asia, Evolvence India Fund, RB Investments and Alteria Capital among its list of existing investors.

Source:- https://retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/food-entertainment/food-services/faasos-parent-rebel-foods-gets-125m-from-coatue-others/70491745