Food tech startup MonkeyBox, which delivers healthy meal boxes to kids in schools, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding through pre series A from early stage investors Blume Ventures, NB Ventures, Nspira and a couple of angel investors.
The funding will be used for expansion and future marketing campaigns.
MonkeyBox is a Bengaluru-based start-up, which provides balanced and portioned vegetarian meals specially designed by nutritionists as per Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA).
Started in October 2015 by Sanjay Rao and Sandeep Kannambadi, the meal boxes are delivered to the schools directly, 30 minutes before their breakfast, lunch or snack time. Currently MonkeyBox has close to 2000 subscribers for meal boxes between the age group of 3 – 18 years old.
The three meals are designed to meet 70% of the child's daily requirement of energy, protein, fat and certain micronutrients important in children such as iron.
MonkeyBox’s key focus right now is to expand to more schools across Bengaluru.
“This round of funding will help us to start operations for our two new kitchens in Thanisandra in the north and Kudlu Gate in the east. We are aiming to cover 75% of Bengaluru with a target of reaching 12,000 subscriptions by end of the academic year 2018. The funding will also be used for on-boarding more employees into the circuit and for future marketing campaigns,” Sanjay Rao, Co-founder and CEO, MonkeyBox said.
The company has also started supplying at daycare and Montessories for children in the group of 1-3 years. MonkeyBox has also partnered with local farms and distributors for supplying fresh ingredients for the meals.
Ashish Fafadia, CFO at Blume Ventures said, “MonkeyBox has been providing nutritious, fresh and tasty food for school kids delivered at schools that makes results in a balanced-diet for kids while they relish tasty food. Their very high subscriptions are an indication of parent’s preference for this as a dependable alternative to home cooked food.”
MonkeyBox last received seed funding from Blume Ventures and a clutch of high net-worth individuals around December 2015. It is currently supplying over 1500 meals per day to more than 85 schools in Bangalore.