Chotta Haazri Foods Pvt. Ltd, which operates tea kiosks in Mumbai under the brand Haazri, has raised Rs 1.25 crore (around $180,000 at current exchange rates) in a seed round of funding from early-stage investment firm Artha Venture Fund.
According to a statement, the company will use the fresh capital to set up kiosks at 20 more locations across Mumbai. It currently has a presence at five locations in the city. Part of the money will also be earmarked for making senior hires.
Haazri provides tea, filter coffee and fresh snacks at its kiosks. It also supplies flasks of freshly-brewed tea and coffee to offices.
“Haazri’s low capex setup cost will allow them to scale rapidly,” said Anirudh Damani, managing partner at Artha Venture Fund. “It is an ideal candidate to operate as a franchise model.”
Incorporated in 2016, the company was founded by Karan Shinghal, Dhruv Agarwal and Arjun Minda. All three founders studied at The Doon School in Dehradun.
Firms in the broader tea café segment have raised institutional funding in recent months.
Earlier this week, VCCircle reported that tea café chain Chaayos had raised Rs 81 crore ($11.3 million) in its Series B round of funding led by SAIF Partners.
In April, omnichannel operator Chai Point had raised $20 million (Rs 131.5 crore) in a Series C round of funding led by private equity firm Paragon Partners.
Artha Venture Fund
The fund is sponsored by Artha India Ventures and Singularity Holdings, the family offices of former Bombay Stock Exchange directors Ashok Kumar Damani and Ramesh M Damani, and former Reliance Capital investments head Madhusudan Kela, respectively.
It made its first investment in online peer-to-peer lending platform LenDen Club’s pre-Series A round, putting $250,000 into the company.
Artha Venture Fund aims to invest Rs 10-15 crore in each portfolio company, and will reserve 50-60% of the corpus for follow-on investments.
