Rebel Foods, a startup that specializes in online-only eateries, announced a $210 million funding round ahead of its planned initial public offering in 2026.
Temasek Holdings Pte of Singapore led the fundraising, with participation from current investor Evolvence. The Series G round involves the sale of both new and existing stock, allowing present shareholders to liquidate some of their holdings. The Mumbai-based company is now worth $1.4 billion.
"We're planning our IPO in the next 18- to 24-month time frame. We're looking to schedule it at an opportune time," Piyush Kakkad, chief financial officer, said in a Bloomberg video interview.
McKinsey & Co. alumnus Jaydeep Barman started Rebel Foods with the purpose of developing a portfolio of online-only companies. Its operations presently include Oven Story, which offers several cheese-loaded pizzas; Mandarin Oak, an Indian-Chinese brand; and Behrouz, a biryani label. It also has a smartphone service called EatSure, which it advertises as a "food court on an app."
The firm works in 75 cities across India, serving customers from 450 dark kitchens, so dubbed because there are no servers or tables. According to Kakkad, the business intends to expand to 800 such facilities, also known as cloud kitchens, by 2029, eventually reaching 200 cities. The company also operates in the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.
Rebel is also the India franchise holder for the US fast food giant Wendy's, which operates 160 restaurants and handles online deliveries. According to Kakkad, the business is in talks with several major brands to expand into India.
Rebel plans to use the new funding to grow internationally and harness new technology such as artificial intelligence to improve operations. It is beginning to employ artificial intelligence to estimate demand, source ingredients more efficiently, and increase kitchen productivity. Rebel also uses OpenAI's chatbots to handle a large portion of its customer calls, so only a fraction of callers are routed to human agents.
"Call volumes are rising 20 percent to 25 percent annually but costs have stayed flat or have declined in some cases," Kakkad added.
