WayCool Foods is a farm to fork supply chain start-up that visions to organise India’s agricultural produce and deliver clean, fresh and better products to consumers by eliminating the middlemen, inefficiency and reducing wastage. Thus, generating a higher return for farmers.
The agricultural supply start-up has recently raised funds worth USD 7.8 million in debt from multiple investors, namely InnoVen Capital, Samunnati and RBL Bank.
The fresh infusion of funds will be utilised to boost the start-up’s automation technology in current warehouse and distribution centres and to meet the working capital of the current Financial year, as reported by YourStory.
The Chennai-based start-up was founded five years back, in 2015 by Sanjay Desari and Karthik Jayaraman with a singular vision to tech-enable India’s agricultural supply chain to produce basic staples and value-added products such as dairy and rice.
According to WayCool Food’s CrunchBase profile, the start-up has collected total funding of USD 78.4 million and is backed by a number of investors including IndusInd bank, LightBox, Caspian Impact Investments, Northern Arc and others.
In previous debt financing round, the agriculture supply chain bagged a total of $5.5 million by USIDFC- United States International Development Finance Corporation. The funding was financed by the company’s existing investor, IndusInd Bank.
To paraphrase Chinna Pardhasaradhi, Chief Financial Officer of WayCool Foods, he mentioned in a statement that the company’s latest debt financing round completes its finance requirements for the year according to its Annual Business Plan. The latest infusion of funds shall be utilised to select new lines for growth and build newer related assets in both physical and digital tangents.
Furthermore, he mentions that the company always prefers to choose a blend of funding sources to maximise on their capital utilisation and efficiency which will guarantee to deliver a higher rate of return to its investors.
WayCool Foods claims to be the most “capital-efficient” start-up in the supply chain market.
The next goal for the supply-chain start-up is to achieve over 70% automation in digital as well as physical space by mid-2021 and this goal shall be achieved by improving the company’s process flow, enhancing capital efficiency and reducing operational errors, according to YourStory.
Next up for the supply chain business is to grow consistently if not exponentially. The company plans to accelerate profitability and improve overall efficiency by retaining sufficient capital to invest in profitable departments, especially technology and automation that will enhance its operations across its complete value chain.
