Matrix-backed Country Delight raises $108M in Series D funding

25th May, 2022. Gurgaon: 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.

"Congratulations to the founders Chakri and Nitin on an important milestone as they continue to scale the company into a household fresh foods brand! We have been privileged to be partners from an early stage and we welcome Temasek and Venturi,' commented Avnish Bajaj, Founder & Managing Director, Matrix India.

About Country Delight:
Country Delight is a tech-first direct to home consumer brand delivering Natural food essentials directly from the farmer to the doorstep of the consumer. CD enters a household with fresh milk as the hook and does ~8 million deliveries per month across 15 cities with supply chain that spans across 11 states in the country. For more information, visit www.countrydelight.in

About Venturi Partners:
Founded in 2019 by veteran consumer investor Nicholas Cator, Venturi Partners is an Asia focused investment platform that enables consumer-facing business start-ups to build disruptive brands in India and Southeast Asia. The firm provides growth funding to customer centric, purpose-driven brands in India and Southeast Asia, with a focus on education, healthcare and fast-moving consumer goods, that have a shared desire to create a positive impact on the world. Venturi has built a unique investment platform for families wanting to participate in the long-term consumer growth trends in Asia. The platform is built around shared values and long term partnerships and aims to bring operational value-add to entrepreneurs building tomorrow's leading brands in Asia. For more information, please visit www.venturi.partners

About Temasek:
Temasek is a global investment company with a net portfolio value of S$381bn (US$283b) as at 31 March 2021. Headquartered in Singapore, it has 13 offices in 9 countries around the world. The Temasek Charter defines Temasek's three roles as an Investor, Institution and Steward, which shape its ethos to do well, do right, and do good. As a provider of catalytic capital, it seeks to enable solutions to key global challenges. With sustainability at the core of all Temasek does, it actively seeks sustainable solutions to address present and future challenges, as it captures investible opportunities to bring about a sustainable future for all. For more information on Temasek, please visit www.temasek.com.sg

About IIFL AMC:
IIFL Asset Management (IIFL AMC) is a part of IIFL Wealth and Asset Management. IIFL AMC is an alternates-focused asset management and has been playing a pivotal role in the growth of the AIF industry in India. A disciplined and active management approach combined with research-led strategies allows IIFL AMC to tap into India's potential for delivering on its commitments and long-term growth. The AMC's diversified suite of mutual funds, alternative investment funds, credit funds and venture capital funds span public and private equities as well as fixed income securities and real estate. IIFL AMC's distinctive products bring out the entrepreneurial edge, agility and speed of execution of a boutique asset management business, while providing gold standards of corporate governance of a large corporation with a long-term focus.

About Matrix Partners India:
Founded in 2006, the firm invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer and enterprise market at the seed, early and early growth stages. Matrix India has invested in several market leading consumer-focused companies such as, Mosaic Wellness (health & wellness digital platform), W For Woman (ready to wear fashion label), OZiva (India's leading clean, plant-based nutrition brand), Open Secret ("unjunked' snack brand), The Whole Truth (clean label food brand), DaMENSCH (premium men's apparel brand), & Chumbak (design-led lifestyle brand).

Other marquee investments include Ola (mobility), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Razorpay (payments), OfBusiness (B2B Commerce, fintech), Five Star Business Finance (SME lending), Ola Electric (electric vehicles), Stanza Living (tech-enabled student housing platform), OneCard (mobile-first credit card), DealShare (social commerce platform), GoKwik (e-commerce enablement platform), Captain Fresh (seafood marketplace), Bijnis (B2B platform for factories), MoEngage (intelligent marketing cloud platform), Jupiter (consumer neobank), Mswipe (mobile POS), Zupee (leading skill-based gaming app), and Oxyzo (a tech-enabled smart financing solution provider) among others. Matrix India has advisory offices in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. Matrix Partners has a global network of funds investing in the US, China and India, with approximately $5 billion under management. Further information is available at www.matrixpartners.in. To know more about our investment philosophy & ideologies, check out the #MatrixMoments podcast series.