BENGALURU (TIP): HungerBox, the Growth Story-promoted B2B food-tech company t announced, January 22, the closing of USD $2.5 million in pre-series A funding led by Lionrock Capital and Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder, Infosys.

Started in 2016, HungerBox is a full stack, food-tech company that is focused on the B2B space and operates 100+ digital cafeterias for more than 75 corporate clients including Qualcomm, Microsoft, FirstSource, Accenture, CapGemini, Genpact, ABB, Amazon and McKinsey, across Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi/NCR and Jaipur.

 “HungerBox’s business has scaled tremendously over the last 15 months with nearly 7 million orders placed on our platform till date. We are clocking more than 120,000 daily orders and expect to scale this to half a million orders per day by end-2018,” said Sandipan Mitra, CEO & Co-Founder, HungerBox. “The funding we have received from marquee investors will boost our ability to scale our operations to keep pace with the traction we are seeing for our digital cafeteria management solution.”

Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder, Infosys commented, “There is tremendous potential for innovation in the B2B food-tech arena as corporate spends on F&B are already massive and growing year-on-year. HungerBox addresses this large space with an easily scalable model and an end-to-end solution that provides a win-win to employees as well as to corporate clients”.

“The B2B food space has plenty of headroom for growth and innovation for years to come.  The winners in the sector will be those with a powerful, tech-led offering and the ability to scale in-step with their clients. HungerBox certainly has all the credentials to be a leader in this space,” said Hari Kumar, Founder & CEO, Lionrock Capital.

 Spending on F&B in the B2B space alone is estimated to reach US $ 14 billion in India in 2018. The space is growing at ~ 15% per annum.

HungerBox’s seamless, tech-led solution enables end-to-end digital cafeteria management with the company’s proprietary technology platform connecting food vendors to employees within client organizations through a customized mobile app available to each employee.

Using the app, employees can view the F&B menu provided by all enlisted food vendors at their workplace café’s, place orders and track delivery accurately. They can also provide ratings / feedback. HungerBox’s solution provides admin teams at the client organization with the ability to track the entire F&B operation including food consumption, orders, feedback etc., in real-time. More than 50 different payment methods are integrated into the service offering including in-app purchases by an employee, payment via smart cards, m-wallets, self-serve kiosks at the café’s etc.

 HungerBox uses latest technology advancements like IoT in its solution to seamlessly connect the vendor side hardware (designed by HungerBox) and employees of corporate. The HungerBox solution also provides features like ‘Personalized Recommendations’ to employees through its AI-driven technology, ‘Health Mode’ for health conscious employees, ability to undertake group-ordering and orders from restaurants in the vicinity when corporate cafés are closed etc.

HungerBox employs 200 staff across India and was started by Sandipan Mitra and Uttam Kumar, who are both veterans of the food tech space in India whose previous stints included global food takeaway ordering service Just Eat’s India operations. HungerBox is promoted by GrowthStory, the venture-builder platform founded by serial entrepreneurs, K Ganesh and Meena Ganesh.