Red Sprout to raise Rs 60 crore to spice up Hello Curry business

Red Sprout Foods Private Limited, a Hyderabad-based start-up that operates quick service restaurant (QSR) business under the Hello Curry brand, is planning to raise anywhere between Rs 40 crore and Rs 60 crore in a second round of funding to fuel its expansion plans during the next calendar, said director Raju Bhupati.

Barely three months into operations with a pilot model of its business with two kitchens at Madhapur and Gachibowli in Hyderabad, Hello Curry today closed its first round of seed funding of Rs 3 crore from SRI Capital, a Rs 100-crore seed stage venture fund founded by Sashi Reddi, founder and former chief executive officer of independent software testing firm AppLabs. “We propose to spend the Rs 3 crore on marketing spanning the next three months and on doing food innovation at our lab, before rolling out multiple retail outlets across Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore by December next year,” Bhupati told Business Standard.

Red Sprout is in the process of setting up a retail outlet, which will also house a small island kitchen, at Kavuri Hills in Hyderabad shortly and at three more locations in the city by December, even as it is firming up plans to open five QSRs in Chennai and an equal number in Bangalore, each with an investment of between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 30 lakh.

Bhupati claims Hello Curry to be the first QSR in the world offering a fixed delivery time of 30 minutes within a four-kilometre radius and 45 minutes beyond that, as against the industry average of 45 minutes to one hour.