Indian Angel Network invests in health food start-up Jiyo Natural

The Indian Angel Network (IAN) has invested in Jiyo Natural, a Bengaluru-based start-up which offers personalised nutritionally-balanced, calorie-monitored and chemical-free food through web and app. Rajiv Mehta and Sumit Dhingra, who led this round of investment, will join the Jiyo Natural board.

The investment will be primarily utilised towards marketing, technology and infrastructure with the goal to create brand awareness through online and on-the-ground marketing, besides creating easy-to-use web and mobile apps that can make it convenient for customers to order and maintain food subscriptions with the company.

"With this investment, we intend to reach out to at least 80% of Bengaluru, before expanding to five other cities including Mumbai, Pune, Delhi-NCR, Chennai and Hyderabad in the next expansion phase," Rajesh Singh, co-founder of Jiyo Natural, said in a statement on Wednesday.

"It's an over Rs12,500-crore market wherein we are growing at 10-15% annually. IAN has been extremely supportive in our journey, and we intend to work with them to build a very strong brand presence for Jiyo Natural in the country and abroad," he added

Founded in March 2014, the idea and the concept of Jiyo Natural was born when three of the original set of co-founders including Sharan Hiremath and Jayas Damodaran met at Jindal Nature Cure Institute where they had enrolled for a regular health rejuvenation session.

While Hiremath ran his own software company Ariveguru, Damodaran headed sales consulting at Oracle India. Subsequently, Rajesh Singh, who had previously worked with Cisco in the US and India, Gaurav Bhalotia, who was a consultant on technology working with a number of start-ups and Sunandini Sharma, a qualified naturopath doctor who had worked earlier at Jindal, joined the founding team.

Jiyo Natural currently offers two products - Jiyo Health, a nutritionally-balanced meal, and Jiyo Manage, a personalised meal option. New products like healthy snacks, health drinks and energy bars are on its roadmap, the company said.