Chennai-headquartered Fipola Retail India, an omni channel meat Direct-to-Consumer startup, has raised $ 3 million (₹22.77 crore) in a fresh round and the investment was led by C. K. Ranganathan, Chairman and Managing Director of FMCG major Cavinkare Pvt Ltd.
The firm intends to use this funding for expanding its stores to newer geographies and for marketing. This deal was facilitated by IIFL Securities Premia (Priority Relationship).
“We are currently at 65 stores and will be opening 37 more in the next 45 days. It's an aggressive timeline but work was going on for the last two months and we are targeting to open 5 to 6 stores a week starting this week,” Sushil Kanugolu, Managing Director and CEO of Fipola Retail India told The Hindu.
“Our stores are currently across Chennai, Coimbatore, Pondicherry, Vellore, Tirupur, Hyderabad and Bangalore. We would be entering Pune by May 2022. With 100 plus stores, Fipola will be India’s largest D2C omni channel meat and seafood brand,” he said. Fipola has also chalked out plans to enter into newer territories like Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Punjab and Kolkatta. Mr.Kanugolu said that Fipola in the next 16-18 months would have a pan India presence.
The market opportunity is huge as 95% of meat and seafood market in India is still unorganised and people are purchasing from wet markets and butcher shops. The COVID-19 pandemic has also helped those in the business of selling organised meat. “The COVID-19 pandemic helped our business grow by almost 300%. Consumers were looking for hygienic and safer options for buying meat,” Mr. Kanugolu said. Interestingly, the profile of people buying meat from omni-channel players are youngsters and typical middle class families. Currently, 60% of revenue for Fipola comes from retail and 40% comes from online.
Fipola is now looking at raising $40 million and will be closing the deal by end of June. “There is a lot of inbound interests from various VC's and PE's. We will be closing the deal in the next two months,” Mr.Kanugolu pointed out.
