Matrix-backed Country Delight Raises $108 Mn In Series D Funding

Country Delight, India’s leading D2C food essentials brand, has raised $108M in a Series D round of funding.

The round was led by Venturi Partners and Temasek with participation from SWC Global and Trifecta Capital. Existing investors, IIFL Asset Management, Elevation Capital, Orios Venture Partners and Matrix Partners India also participated in this round.

This transaction takes the company’s total funding to $147M.

Avendus Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Country Delight on this transaction.

Founded in 2013, Country Delight has grown to become India’s leading D2C fresh food essentials brand offering dairy, fruits and vegetables to the doorstep of consumers. The company’s business model ensures fresh farm-to-home deliveries within 24-36 hours from sourcing, facilitated by a fully integrated just-in-time supply chain model. Country Delight’s quality-first DNA, with a focus on freshness, enables a tangible differentiation in product quality. In the last 3 years alone, Country Delight has grown 10x in scale and has served over 1.5 million customers across India.
 
India’s fresh food and staples market is expected to cross $50B by 2025. Today, over 60% of the fresh foods market is unorganized with limited cold storage capabilities, a fragmented logistics chain and inadequate visibility of product quality across the supply chain. Country Delight with its quality-first DNA and tech-enabled supply chain holds great promise in solving these challenges.
 
Speaking on the fundraise, Chakradhar Gade, CEO and Co-founder and Nitin Kaushal, COO and Co-founder, Country Delight said, “Country Delight is on a mission to disrupt the decades' old Indian food essentials space. On the one hand we have a highly unorganized sector, where quality is unreliable and on the other hand, we have a highly organized sector, where the essence and naturalness of food is completely lost. At Country Delight, we have taken a tech-driven and consumer-centric approach to solve this problem by delivering natural, fresh and minimally processed food essentials, sourced directly from farmers present across the country and delivered to the doorstep of consumers every single day. We are thrilled to have Venturi and Temasek partner with us on this journey and are equally excited and humbled by the continued belief and participation of all our existing investors, IIFL, Elevation Capital, Orios Venture Partners and Matrix Partners India.”

Rishika Chandan, Executive Managing Director, Venturi Partners said, “Country Delight is solving a very real problem at scale. Quality consciousness in India is on the rise as are customer expectations of transparency and clean products. The brand’s focus on offering farm-to-doorstep daily pantry essentials that are fresh and of the highest quality has resulted in immensely positive customer feedback and strong loyalty. We have been very impressed by their product-first approach, vertically integrated business model and ability to expand across categories. India has about 20 million affluent households across the top 50 cities that could benefit from Country Delight’s range of products, making this a huge opportunity that has remained largely commoditized thus far.”

Chetan Naik, Private Equity Fund Manager, IIFL AMC said, “Country Delight is uniquely positioned to capture the evolving consumer preference towards natural, minimally processed and healthier food choices. They are the only vertically integrated player with a direct-to-consumer channel, owning the entire farm to fork ecosystem. Since our previous investment, Country Delight has evolved into a basket of offerings across the food essentials segment and has demonstrated best-in-class customer retention metrics amongst new age D2C brands. We are amazed at Country Delight’s brand salience and their undeterred focus on customer centricity, product quality and capital efficient growth.”

Deepak Gaur, Partner, Elevation Capital said, “From Day one, Country Delight has been on a mission to delight Indian consumers with directly sourced fresh products and superlative service standards. We are very excited as they continue to expand their product offering and service a larger customer base across new cities and build India’s most loved fresh food platform.”

"Temasek and Venturi joining us is an endorsement of the business built and the opportunity ahead. Country Delight is one of those rare companies which have been built largely on positive word of mouth, rather than discount offers. This comes from the founders' obsession with quality in everything they do," commented Rehan Yar Khan, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners.