HungerBox, the Growth Story-promoted B2B food-tech company, on Monday, January 22, announced the closing of $2.5 million in pre-series-A funding led by Lionrock Capital and Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Infosys.
Started in 2016, HungerBox is a full-stack food-tech company focusing on the B2B space. It operates 100+ digital cafeterias for more than 75 corporate clients, including Qualcomm, Microsoft, FirstSource, Accenture, Capgemini, Genpact, ABB, Amazon and McKinsey, across Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi/NCR and Jaipur.
"HungerBox's business has scaled tremendously over the last 15 months with nearly 7 million orders placed on our platform till date. We are clocking more than 120,000 daily orders and expect to scale this to half a million orders per day by end-2018," said Sandipan Mitra, CEO & Co-Founder, HungerBox.
"The funding we have received from marquee investors will boost our ability to scale our operations to keep pace with the traction we are seeing for our digital cafeteria management solution."
Kris Gopalakrishnan said: "There is tremendous potential for innovation in the B2B food-tech arena as corporate spends on F&B are already massive and growing year-on-year. HungerBox addresses this large space with an easily scalable model and an end-to-end solution that provides a win-win to employees as well as to corporate clients."
Hari Kumar, founder and CEO of Lionrock Capital, said: "The B2B food space has plenty of headroom for growth and innovation for years to come. The winners in the sector will be those with a powerful, tech-led offering and the ability to scale in-step with their clients. HungerBox certainly has all the credentials to be a leader in this space."
Spending on F&B in the B2B space alone is estimated to reach $14 billion in India in 2018. The space is believed to be growing at around 15 percent per annum.
HungerBox's solution claims to enable end-to-end digital cafeteria management with the company's proprietary technology platform connecting food vendors to employees within client organisations through a customised mobile app available to each employee.
Using the app, employees can view the F&B menu provided by all enlisted food vendors at their workplace cafés, place orders and track delivery accurately. They can also provide ratings and feedback.
HungerBox's solution provides admin teams at the client organisation the ability to track the entire F&B operation including food consumption, orders and feedback, in real time.
More than 50 different payment methods are integrated into the service offering, including in-app purchases by an employee, payment via smart cards, m-wallets and self-serve kiosks at the café's.
''The company is planning for all-India expansion and full-fledged operations this year with independent offices and sales team in all major Indian cities. Very soon HungerBox will start working internationally'.' Sandipan Mitra, co-founder of HungerBox, told International Business Times, India.
HungerBox claims to use the latest technology advancements like IoT in its solution to connect the vendor side hardware (designed by HungerBox) and employees of corporates. The HungerBox solution also provides features like "Personalized Recommendations" to employees through its AI-driven technology, "Health Mode" for health-conscious employees, the ability to undertake group-ordering and orders from restaurants in the vicinity when corporate cafés are closed, and more.
HungerBox employs 200 staff across India and was started by Sandipan Mitra and Uttam Kumar, both of whom are from the food-tech space in India whose previous stints included global food takeaway ordering service JustEat's India operations.
HungerBox is promoted by GrowthStory, the venture-builder platform founded by entrepreneurs K Ganesh and Meena Ganesh.
