Cloud Kitchen startup Curefoods, started by CureFit co-founder Ankit Nagori, announced on Friday that it has acquired 6 cloud kitchen brands in one swoop. The Bengaluru based company has said that it will continue to maintain a strong appetite for acquisition as it plans to onboard 25 more cloud kitchen brands in near future.
The latest acquired brands include CakeZone, MasalaBpx and ParathaBox while Curefoods has secured exclusive online franchising rights of YumLane, Sharief Bhai and Aligarh House.
In recent years the niche area of cloud kitchen has gained lot of traction. Much of this credit will probably go to Rebel foods, which has emerged as the poster boy of this niche area. Few weeks back, Rebel foods emerged as the first unicorn from the nascent cloud kitchen space.
Curefoods certainly wants to get where Rebel foods is but the Ankit Nagori led company is apparently following a different strategy. While Rebel foods built all its successful cloud kitchen brands from scratch, CureFoods is seeking to consolidate its cloud kitchen biz by aggressively pursuing an acquisition strategy.
Nagori has told a leading media portal that it will look to acquire popular local brands that are listed on Swiggy and Zomato and help them scale their business. Nagori told that these local brands have the potential to grow but don’t have the resources to do so. CureFoods will fill this void, he further added.
This strategy seems to be directly inspired by popular American unicorn Thrasio, which acquires fast-growing businesses listed on Amazon. However, for Curefoods to pull off such a strategy, it will have to keep raising funds. Curefoods recently raised $13 Mn from the likes of Iron pillar and Binny Bansal. Additionally, it also closed $10 Mn debt funding from Alteria Capital.