India’s WayCool Foods Raises $6.5M to Boost Technology

Business-to-business (B2B) agri-commerce company WayCool Foods raised the equivalent of $6.5 million in debt funding to make technology-related expansions, according to multiple news reports.

The funding was led by Stride Ventures, which has been expanding its portfolio of new-age Indian startups across different sectors. The fresh capital adds to the $40 million WayCool Foods raised last month from 57 Stars Global Innovation Fund.

WayCool also closed a $117 million Series D funding round in January from LightRock, LightBox, FMO, Lightsmith, World Bank Group’s private investment arm International Finance Corp (IFC), Redwood Equity and Gawa Capital, VC Circle reported.

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“WayCool aims to build the world’s largest food development and distribution services company and positively impact the lives of 150,000 farmers. The company is supported by best-in-class investors and a remarkable team who are building the future of the Indian food economy,” said Apoorva Sharma, partner, Stride Ventures, according to VC Circle.

Based in Chennai, India and co-founded in 2015 by Sanjay Dasari, Karthik Jayaraman, Vignesh Kumar Manogaran, and Sendhil Kumar Natarajan, WayCool Foods aims to drive social impact while transforming India’s food economy. The startup is striving to be the world’s largest food development and distribution services company and positively impact the lives of 500,000 farmers, per reports.

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“We at WayCool have been taking several tech-driven initiatives to innovate and bolster the Indian food economy. We welcome Stride Ventures to the WayCool family joining us in our journey to build one of the leading food and agritech platforms,” said WayCool Chief Financial Officer Chinna Pardhasardhi.

WayCool provides product sourcing, food processing, branding, marketing, last-mile distribution and farm inputs, which gives the company end-to-end control over the food value chain, according to Inc42.com.

The startup distributes a wide range of directly-sourced fresh produce, works with more than 150,000 farmers and operates a full-stack product range across multiple channels, to 100,000 clients, the company said, according to VC Circle.

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