REBEL Foods, a startup that specialises in online-only restaurants, unveiled a US$210 million funding round, ahead of an initial public offering (IPO) the company is seeking to pull off by 2026.
Singapore’s Temasek Holdings led the fundraising, while Evolvence, an existing investor, will also participate, the company said in a statement. The Series G round includes the sale of new and existing stock, allowing current shareholders to sell some of their holdings.
The Mumbai-based company is now valued at US$1.4 billion.
“We’re planning our IPO in the next 18- to 24-month time frame,” Piyush Kakkad, chief financial officer, said in a video interview with Bloomberg. “We’re looking to schedule it at an opportune time.”
Rebel Foods was founded by McKinsey & Co alumnus Jaydeep Barman with the goal of building a range of online-only brands. Its operations now include Oven Story, with variations of cheese-loaded pizzas; an Indian-Chinese brand called Mandarin Oak; and biryani label Behrouz.
It also operates a smartphone service called EatSure that it describes as a “food court on an app”.
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The startup operates in 75 cities in India where it serves customers from 450 dark kitchens, so named because they have no waiters or tables. The startup plans to ramp up to 800 such facilities – sometimes called cloud kitchens – by 2029, growing to a total of 200 cities by then, Kakkad said.
The company operates in the UK and United Arab Emirates too.
Rebel Foods is also the India franchise holder for US fast food chain Wendy’s for whom it runs 160 stores and handles online deliveries.
The startup is negotiating to bring more global brands into India, Kakkad noted.
With the new funding, Rebel Foods is aiming to expand overseas and leverage new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to boost operations.
It is beginning to use AI to forecast demand, source ingredients efficiently and boost the productivity of its kitchens.
Rebel Foods is also using OpenAI’s chatbots to handle a substantial volume of its customer calls – so only a fraction of callers get passed to human agents.
“Call volumes are rising 20 to 25 per cent annually but costs have stayed flat or have declined in some cases,” Kakkad added. BLOOMBERG
