Dairy technology startup Stellapps Technologies on Monday announced that it has raised $26 million in series C funding in a mix of equity and debt to grow its ‘mooMark’ business, which focuses on contract manufacturing and private labelled dairy business of high-quality value-added dairy products.
Series C is a late-stage investment round. It is used by startups to scale up operations.
The round saw participation from existing investors Blume Ventures, Omnivore, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, IDH Farmfit Fund, 500 Startups, and Blue Ashva Capital. Miledeep Capital was a new investor.
The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) provided the startup with debt funding.
Some of the firm’s other investors include Celesta Capital, Nutreco, Qualcomm Ventures, ABB Technology Ventures, Venture Highway, Binny Bansal, and BEENEXT.
“We are excited to receive continued commitment from our existing investors and welcome aboard new investors as part of our Series C round. This capital will help ‘mooMark’ scale its value-added dairy product offering to its customers across India in a sustainable manner and strengthen its export segment going forward,” said Ranjith Mukundan, CEO, Stellapps.
Incubated at IIT Madras, Stellapps started as a Dairy IoT solutions provider, and has now ventured into contract manufacturing and private labelling of value-added dairy products under the “‘mooMark’” brand. The company utilises a “low-capex and tech-powered approach” to deliver these products to Indian and global customers
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.”
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