Rebel Foods Pvt Ltd, the owner of online kitchen brands including Faasos and Behrouz Biryani, has invested an undisclosed sum to acquire a controlling stake in Bengaluru-based chocolate brand SMOOR.
Rebel Foods said the investment aims to boost growth and expand into new markets.
Marking the fourth buyout by Rebel Foods, SMOOR looks to scale by three-fold in 2022-23. The new round values SMOOR at $50 million.
In an interaction with VCCircle, Vimal Sharma, CEO of SMOOR, said, “It is a natural progression for us to expand into the Middle East after this investment.”
SMOOR sells chocolates, signature cakes, gift hampers, desserts, and beverages, among other things, through its lounges, cafes, kiosks, and own digital platforms, as well as through online aggregator platforms.
The brand claims to have logged over 120% growth since last year and plans to scale towards $100 million in annual revenue by 2026.
Founded in 2015 by Vimal Sharma, the luxury chocolate brand opened its first store in August 2016 in Bangalore. Currently, it has stores in Mumbai, Gurgaon and Chennai.
“With Rebel Foods’ investment, we are set to make deeper inroads into the global market, introducing new and exciting confectionaries in multiple, accessible formats. We look forward to the growth that will unfold on the back of this development,” Sharma, said.
Raghav Joshi, Co-founder of Rebel Foods added, “This investment gives us further confidence that we have been able to consistently choose outstanding brands. Being an early adopter of the Thrasio model in food in India, we have disrupted 500 years old industry of the traditional restaurant business, by building a full-stack technology-enabled platform.”
Rebel invests, scale and grow third-party food brands adapting the now famous Thrasio-like model for food. This model works when companies aggregate small third-party brands with an intent to scale them.
The investment in SMOOR is in line with Rebel Foods’ ‘strategic investments’, in December Rebel Foods said it will be investing $150 million to invest and acquire brands.
It operates more than 45 internet kitchen brands through a combination of owned and partner brands in 10 countries. In all, it operates more than 4,000 internet restaurants in 450 kitchen locations.
Founded in 2011 by Jaydeep Barman and Kallol Banerjee. Rebel currently operates in India, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, and Bangladesh.
Rebel operates a full-stack technology platform, Rebel Operating System (OS), that helps its partner brands scale presence across the Rebel network of over 70 cities in India and globally.
In November it raised an additional Rs 107.64 crore (around $14.5 million) as part of its Series F funding round.
The additional funding came in less than two months after it raised $175 million (Rs 1,308 crore) in its Series F round of funding led by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) in October 2021. This investment round propelled the company to the famed unicorn club comprising startups valued at over $1 billion.
Rebel Foods has also been actively making strategic investments and partnerships in the past years. It picked up a minority stake for an undisclosed amount in Hyderabad-based quick-service restaurant chain Zomoz. In October 2021 VCCircle reported that Rebel has picked up a minority stake in quick-service restaurant (QSR) brand Biryani Blues. In the same month, Foodpanda, owned by Berlin-based Delivery Hero, partnered with Rebel Foods to roll out the Indian company's virtual restaurant brands at 2,000 outlets across 10 Asian countries. It has also invested in the home-chef platform FoodyBuddy and coffee startup Slay Coffee.
