INDIA – India’s largest food delivery, dining and restaurant discovery service Zomato has led a US$5 million series A funding round in food robotics company Mukunda Foods.
Co-founded by Eshwar K Vikas and Sudeep Sabat in 2012 Mukunda Foods has thus far developed six products that have been installed in over 2000 locations, according to the company’s website.
The company notes that its kitchen bots help reduce dependability on labor, elevate consumer experience and help brands expand faster.
The brand has previously raised funds from Ncubate Capital, Singapore Angel Network, and Indian Angel Network.
Till now, the brand has raised a total of around US$8 million, including the current fundraising.
This funding round led by Zomato has taken Mukunda Foods’s valuation to USD 30 million, a statement from Zomato revealed.
According to the release, the food robotics company said that it plans to utilize these funds to expand its reach across QSRs, Cloud Kitchens and Fine Dine segment.
They also plan to use a part of the raised capital to introduce multiple ROI-based models to help the food and beverages businesses scale.
“Our investment will help Mukunda Foods scale Faster, help reduce restaurant food prices, expand margins and enhance customer delight,” said Zomato spokesperson.
Eshwar K. Vikas, CEO and co-founder, Mukunda Foods noted that Zomato and Mukunda Foods share the vision of reaching every restaurant and helping them grow.
“While Zomato does it by helping restaurants reach more customers & increasing their revenues, we help the F&B brands increase their profitability & grow fast with our kitchen technologies,” Vikas added.
He further added that Zomato will use some of the technologies developed by us in their kitchens.”
The food robotics company said it has automated the preparation of multiple cuisines like North Indian Food, South Indian Food, Chinese Food, fried food, pizzas, Continental & Biryani.
10-minute express food delivery
Earlier, Zomato announced a plan to offer 10-minute express food delivery, a move that has not been warmly welcomed by both restaurants and consumers.
Several restaurants and consumers took to social media to raise questions over its quality and freshness, prompting the food aggregator’s founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal to tweet a series of clarifications.
Many restaurant executives said they won’t be able to offer fresh food within 10 minutes even as Goyal clarified on his Twitter handle that the initiative that he announced late on Monday will be for “popular and standardized items only” in nearby locations.
Investing in a robotics firm would however provide Tomato with technology that can be shared with other restaurants to greatly cut down meal preparation times, and maybe achieve the 10-minute delivery target.
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