Slurrp Farm secures $7M funding led by Investment Corp of Dubai to focus on zero junk ingredients

BT News Desk
February 27, 2022 6:11 pm

Launched in 2016, children’s millet-based food brand Slurrp Farm has been a pioneer in bringing back the supergrain millet to the centre of plates across India and more recently, the UAE.

Wholsum Foods, the parent company of Slurrp Farm has recently raised $7 Million in a fresh round of funding led by Investment Corporation of Dubai, the sovereign wealth fund of the Government of Dubai, and existing investor Fireside Ventures, a multi-stage venture fund in India. The fundraise comes a year after Fireside Ventures’ initial investment of $2 Million.

Ahead of the International Year of Millet in 2023, the fresh capital secured will help further the company’s core purpose of developing millet-based products with zero junk ingredients. The funds will be deployed towards product innovation, marketing as well as increasing global footprint. As millets, along with plant proteins such as lentils, legumes and chickpeas make up a large proportion of product research and development at Wholsum Foods, the new initiatives will help improve smallholder value chains and provide demand impetus for the grains.

Speaking about the funding, Meghana Narayan and Shauravi Malik, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of Wholsum Foods Private Limited said, “We have a deep-rooted conviction to bringing millets back to the meals we eat and making them incredibly delicious! They are an inalienable part of our food history. The recent focus of the Union Budget on millets and 2023 being the UN-designated Year of Millets strengthens our commitment to lead the conversation on these supergrains. We are growing steadily and currently clocking in over AED 25 Million of revenue run rate, with an aim to reach AED 250 Million in revenue by 2025. The funds raised will enable us to build a global FMCG brand and take millets to the world!”

Nader Bekhouche, Principal Investment Growth Equity, ICD said, “We are pleased to partner with Wholsum Foods and to support the vision of its founders and the growth of the company. The Slurrp Farm brand is backed by the goodness of superfood ingredients like millets and has built enormous appeal for itself since inception. At ICD, we seek to partner with companies like Wholsum Foods that are building innovative digital-first brands that focus on good for consumers and good for the world while also enjoying a large shareholder value creation opportunity. We believe that Wholsum Foods fits this bill perfectly and is poised to achieve significant scale.”

Kanwaljit Singh, Founder and Managing Partner, Fireside Ventures said, “We are absolutely delighted to participate in this round of funding for Slurrp Farm, a business which has purpose at its core as it brings back ancient grains which are good for both consumers and the planet. As a fund, we believe that building sustainable brands is the dual responsibility of investors and brands alike. In this context, as conscious consumption increases, Slurrp Farm’s vision of bringing back supergrains like millets is perfectly in line with people and planet development goals. In that sense, our investment ethos and the core values which drive these two founders, are a good match.”

The fundraising round comes at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the growth of Slurrp Farm, as consumers became more health-conscious, enabling the brand to register a 10x growth from June 2020 until December 2021.

2021 was an incredibly high growth year for Slurrp Farm which saw the brand achieve several milestones:

  • 20 new SKUs were launched, including several in previously unexplored categories, such as the baked Little Millet Noodles and Foxtail Millet Noodles.
  • The brand expanded to the UAE and is looking to grow its offline and online presence in the region by 40% in the next 12 months.
  • Slurrp Farm also took its zero junk promise to the United Kingdom and the United States of America as it began retailing in the two countries.
  • The brand won the Amazon Global Selling Propel Start-up Accelerator program, which enables Slurrp Farm to get access to customers across the world through Amazon’s e-commerce exports program and create a global brand.
  • Bolstered senior leadership through key hires across its finance, marketing and business development teams.

Slurrp Farm has also raised $1 Million from over 20 angel investors including well-known investors such as Rakesh Kapoor, Former CEO of Reckitt Benckiser, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Executive Vice Chairman, Info Edge, Ashish Dhawan, Founder and CEO, Central Square Foundation, Aditya Ghosh, Board Member of Akasa, Fab India, and OYO, Yasemin Lamy, Deputy CIO of Impact Investment Group CDC, and Samrath Bedi, Executive Director, Forest Essentials, amongst others.

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