Existing investors Blume Ventures, Omnivore, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IDH Farmfit Fund, 500 Global (formerly 500 Startups) and Singapore-based Blue Ashva Capital along with new investor Miledeep Capital, with debt funding from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), participated in the funding round.
While 500 Global, is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator, IDH Farmfit Fund, an impact fund, is focused on smallholder farmers.
The funds will be used for expanding Stellapps’ mooMark business, which focuses on contract manufacturing and private-label dairy operations.
“The focus is going to be on mooMark, and within mooMark specifically, it will be used to develop and support more value-added dairy products,” Ranjith Mukundan, chief executive of Stellapps, told ET.
Founded in 2011 by Mukundan, Ravishankar G Shiroor, Praveen Nale, Ramakrishna Adukuri and Venkatesh Seshasayee, the Bengaluru-based firm is a farm-to-consumer dairy digitisation service provider. It focuses on improving productivity and quality while ensuring end-to-end traceability across the dairy supply chain.
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“Through milk as a starting point, we want to make India the protein hub for the world and eventually extend this to other potential protein sources in the future. It’s a massive opportunity,” Mukundan said.Stellapps’ dairy-tech is deployed in over 42,000 villages across the country, facilitating the movement of over 14 million litres of milk per day, the company said.
It serves around 150 clients, including Unilever, Punjab Paneer, FreshToHome and Namdhari besides hotels, restaurants, and cafés (Horeca).
The firm also plans to begin exporting, starting with West Asia. “We definitely want to make the exports happen this financial year, so we are working towards it. We want to do it in the next two to three quarters,” Mukundan said.
The company clocked a revenue of around Rs 360 crore in FY24. In the current financial year, it plans to hit the Rs 400-crore revenue mark.
“We will remain, from a revenue perspective, flattish, pretty much in line with FY24, but the big change will be that our unit economics and profitability will be significantly better than last financial year. So, that’s the focus for us,” Mukundan said.
Commenting on the investment, Vikram Gawande, lead – growth investments at Blume Ventures, said, “Stellapps to us stands for traceability and quality dairy. The recent funding will enable them to rapidly increase demand for their value-added dairy products, positioning them as a formidable profitable supplier in the market.”
Reihem Roy, partner at Omnivore, said the Mumbai-based agri-food investment group “is a strong believer in India’s dairy sector which represents a colossal 6.5% of the nation’s GDP. We are excited to continue our partnership with Stellapps in their endeavour to provide high quality value-added dairy products at scale while uplifting the dairy economy with traceability, sustainability and farmer-first solutions.”
