Specialty tea brand Teamonk Global Foods Pvt. Ltd said Tuesday it has raised Rs 6.5 crore ($889,000) in a pre-Series A funding round led by angel network Inflection Point Ventures.
Sarcha Ventures, part of multi-family office Sarcha Advisors, and angel investment platform Lead Angels also participated in this round, Teamonk said in a statement.
Three US-based high-net-worth individuals invested as well. They are Madhu K Mohan, an endocrinologist and a member of the Public Health Foundation of India; Anil Menon, senior adviser to chairman of the World Economic Forum; and entrepreneur Jai Gupta.
The company will use the fresh capital to expand in the US, the UK and Canada. It also plans to deploy the funds to start a subscription-based platform in India to boost its domestic presence.
Teamonk, which was launched in 2016 by former Unilever executives Ashok Mittal and Amit Dutta, said it has so far raised Rs 23.5 crore.
The startup had last raised funding from Lead Angels in May.
Last year, VCCircle reported that venture capital firm Hunch Ventures and Rajat Gupta, a former worldwide head of consulting firm McKinsey & Co., among other individual investors invested in the specialty tea firm.
Teamonk offers a range of natural fruit- and flower-based green teas like mango, hibiscus and chamomile, apart from herb-based green teas and Japanese Matcha green tea. It also sells herbal infusions like turmeric-ginger, peppermint and tulsi-ginger.
The company competes with the likes of speciality tea e-tailer Vahdam Teas Pvt. Ltd as well as Bengaluru- and Singapore-based AsianTeaxpress Pte. Ltd, which runs specialty tea e-tailer Teabox.com.
In October last year, venture capital firm Sixth Sense Ventures led a Series C funding round in Delhi-based online retailer Vahdam Teas.
Teabox raised funding from Dubai-based NB Ventures, the family office of Neelesh Bhatnagar, in July last year. It also counts Accel and Singapore-based VC firm JAFCO Asia among its other backers.
In the broader tea retail sector, Tiger Global-backed Chaayos and Chai Point are among the other companies. In April 2018, Chai Point raised $20 million in a Series C round of funding led by private equity firm Paragon Partners.
Investor
Inflection Point Ventures is an angel network founded by senior finance professionals from startups such as Myntra and BookMyShow.
The angel network has been actively making bets on startups since its launch in 2018. It has invested over Rs 100 crore across more than 35 startups.
Some of its recent bets include Internet of Things-based startup Eden Homes, e-sports content platform AFK Gaming, snack-focused cloud kitchen platform Samosa Party Foods and ed-tech startup Edvizo. In June, it also led an investment in Milkbasket, a rather late-stage bet for Inflection Point Ventures.
In a VCCircle Podcast, its CEO Vinay Bansal talked about the angel network's appetite for larger deals.
