Thirty-year-old Akash Okay Sajith was shocked when each his dad and mom have been identified with most cancers, particularly since they’d adopted a wholesome life-style – doing yoga each day, consuming natural meals, taking common walks, and staying away from tobacco and alcohol. This unlucky occasion offered Sajith and his co-founders, Shikha Lakhanpal and Niranjan KS, the impetus to probe the hyperlink between meals, well being, and local weather change. As they dug deep, they discovered that Indians are consuming roughly 70,000 metric tonnes of pesticides yearly, together with these which are banned in different nations for inflicting most cancers.
Living Food was thus began in 2018 to imagine higher management of our meals methods, getting underway with a hydroponic farm in Sajith’s house that grew chemical-free nutrient-dense greens and provided farm-to-table subscriptions. “Today, Living Food provides fresh and high-quality food directly to its customers, servicing 100,000 households in the city of Bengaluru alone,” says Sajith, the co-founder & CEO.
According to him, food-borne ailments are a rising concern in India, costing $15 billion yearly at current and the variety of instances is predicted to rise to 177 million yearly by 2030. The authorities is taking steps to advertise good high quality meals within the nation and has launched initiatives akin to ‘Eat Right India’ in an effort to rework the meals ecosystem. The authorities laid emphasis on chemical-free farming within the final finances as properly.
“Living Food is an effort to bridge gaps in the ecosystem and provide insanely fresh, world-class food directly to Indian consumers,” says Sajith. “The fresh food supply chain is at the core of Living Food’s functioning, with fresh vegetables, fruits, and freshly baked bread being delivered within hours of harvest or production. By working directly with farmers and growers, Living Food enjoys a very short turn-around time. For instance, the company delivers Ice Apple or Nongu, a most delicate and tender fruit, within an hour of harvest, and was one of the first D2C brands to launch this much-loved seasonal fruit,” he provides.
The firm delivers fruit and veggies, freshly baked bread, artisanal dips, spreads, recent cheese and different merchandise from throughout 24 classes, making certain strict high quality management. Its prospects know precisely the place the meals gadgets are coming from, and when the gadgets have been harvested or produced, a facet on which Living Food has made a pioneering contribution. “The company currently fulfills 99% of its deliveries in under 24 hours, with 80% of the orders being completed within just six hours,” claims Sajith.
In order to attain this, Living Food has constructed its personal provide chain and depends on sturdy know-how. Real-time end-to-end order monitoring optimises logistics assets and retains the shopper posted on the standing of products from harvest to supply stage. They use temperature-controlled vans and chilly packaging for transport, which assist protect the standard of things like fruits with out the usage of preservatives. Most importantly, the corporate has struck unique partnerships with a few of the high natural farms within the nation that practise the very best and most environment-friendly methods of agriculture, like hydroponics, aquaponics and permaculture.
In January this 12 months, Living Food raised $7.5 mn in a Series A spherical led by Amasia, a thesis-driven international enterprise capital agency investing in sustainability through behavioural change. Today, Living Food ships 1,50,000 models each month, which works out to greater than three merchandise shipped each minute, and has grown by 600% in simply the final six months. Currently at 1,000 SKUs, the corporate is launching greater than 100 SKUs each month. Their staff dimension has grown to over 400, a ten-fold enhance from a 12 months in the past. “The company is the market leader in the fresh food segment in Bengaluru by a wide margin and is one of the fastest-growing food-tech companies in India today, all set to reach $20 million in ARR in the next 12 months,” says Sajith.
After finishing the beta launch of its cloud kitchen lately with overwhelming buyer response, Living Food can be opening two cloud kitchens each week throughout 50 places in three cities within the subsequent one 12 months.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”