Image Credit: www.daalchini.co.in
Daalchini Technologies is a food tech startup that offers its services with home cooked food through Io T-enabled vending machine. The company aims at increasing its growth capital at around Rs 58 crore in the following 2-3 years to support its growth plans. It is also anticipating an annual turnover rate of Rs 144 crore by the end of the fiscal year 2022.
Daalchini Technologies has over 440 smart stores in 10 cities with around 1.4 lakh monthly active users as yet. The company has 190 franchises, 100 brands and more than 34 cloud kitchen selling on its platform. Prerna Kalra, Co-founder and CEO, Daalchini Technologies informed PTI, “Daalchini plans to raise growth capital of up to USD 5-8 million in the next 2-3 years. As of now, we are planning to raise the growth capital and we are in early stage discussions with few prospective investors. As we adapt ourselves to the pandemic we plan to raise fresh funds to expand our solution beyond 10 cities and the form factor to more use cases.”
Amidst the pandemic, the company looks forward in installing its vending machine at hospitals. Prerna Kalra further added, “Our contactless, smart vending machines are being deployed at city’s Key hospitals including Fortis, Max, Apollo, Dharamshila, Kailash, and Delhi Cancer hospitals. With this development, Daalchini will allow frontline workers, patients and visiting families access to healthy meals in a safe and contactless manner. Considering the current situation, and the dire need for maintaining social distancing, hospitals are increasingly turning to AI, robotics and other smart technologies within their premises.”
She also explained that with more than 43,000 private hospitals and 25,000 public hospitals in India, the demand is quite high and keeps increasing in this current challenging times. She informed that Daalchini Technologies refills their vending machines 3-4 times a day across the country.
On the company’s growth journey Prerna Kalra said, ” We grew from 2 Kiosks to 50 in FY19, and from 50 to 200 in FY20. In Q4 of FY21, we grew from 200 to 310 and now 440+ Kiosks by expanding the scope of our solution. The pace at which we are growing, we should be able to achieve an annual turnover rate of Rs 144 crore by the end of FY22.” In the previous two years, the company raised around Rs 11 crore through Artha Venture Fund and a few angel-investors.