Y Combinator Invests $125,000 In Mumbai-based Nino Foods The funding will help them launch their third brand and capture the rest of the Mumbai market
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator Y Combinator has invested $125,000 in Mumbai-based Nino Foods as a part of their Summer 21 Batch. Nino Foods creates and operates cloud kitchen brands for the premium market in India.
The company was started by duo Nishant Jhaveri and Pranav Mehra 11 months ago by acquiring an 8-year-old pizza brand in Mumbai-Francesco's Pizzeria, and converting it to delivery-only. Today, they also have a burger brand-Nino Burgers, and are launching their third brand in a few weeks.
The food delivery market in India is a $10 billion market and it is booming. Average order values rose from INR 250 to INR 350 because of COVID. Nino Foods is focusing on the most profitable segment of the market-Premium (Orders above INR 400), which accounts for 50 per cent of industry revenues.
The fully-bootstrapped business has grown twelvefold (25 per cent monthly) since inception and monthly orders have grown from 900 to 12,000 in 11 months. The business is already profitable and average order values at Nino brands are threefold of the industry average. The company shares infrastructure and manpower across brands, and they use hyper-local data for menu optimization. New locations break even in less than a month. They currently have 3 outlets in Mumbai (3rd one just launched this week). Their Delivery first DNA means that everything from food trials to kitchen operations is optimized for the best at-home eating experience.
"We built our second brand, Nino burgers, to prove to ourselves that we could create a food brand that people love. We used data for some decisions and went with our gut on others. Being outsiders to the food industry but lifelong food lovers, we were able to take a more customer-centric approach. We experiment often, iterate quickly, and want to build a category-defining company with global impact," said Nishant Jhaveri, co-founder, Nino Foods.
Nino Foods wants to create category-leading food brands with scary amounts of customer love. The YC program and funding will help them launch their third brand and capture the rest of the Mumbai market.
"We realized early on that employee happiness drives customer happiness in the food business because it directly impacts the end product. We're hiring dreamers who think big and want to be a part of building the future of food" added Pranav Mehra, co-founder, Nino Foods.
The company expects to be in 3 cities by mid of next year.
