SoftBank CEO's brother invests in InnerChef

BENGALURU: Gurugram-based food delivery platform InnerChef has raised $2.5 million in fresh funding led by Japanese early-stage fund Mistletoe, its maiden investment in India. Singapore-based M&S Partners also participated in the round along with InnerChef 's existing investors.

Launched in 2015 by Rajesh Sawhney , Sanjeev Singhal and Bal Dighent, Innerchef offers ready-to-eat meals and desserts. It had earlier raised around $1.5 million from tech entrepreneurs like redBus founder Phanindra Sharma, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal and GOQii founder Vishal Gondal.

Mistletoe is funded and owned by Taizo Son, serial entrepreneur and youngest brother of Masayoshi Son, CEO of Japanese telecommunication and internet corp SoftBank. He is also founder of Japan-based mobile gaming company GungHo, in which SoftBank had acquired a 51% share in 2013 for $1.53 billion. GungHo bought back most of its shares from SoftBank earlier this year.

Sawhney, also the founder of Guru founder of Gurugram-based accelerator programme GSF Accelerator, plans to deploy the funds to focus on the top locations of InnerChef - Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.

"We plan to invest the money in building a brand. We have started adding more kitchens across our four locations. Desserts in InnerChef are taken care of by women entrepreneurs, who are mainly neighbourhood chefs.We are looking to enable 10,000 women entrepreneurs who can make a livelihood on our platform. We want to focus on the first four cities for the next six months," he said.