Early-stage venture capital firm Orios Venture Partners, which counts Battery Smart, Karbon, ixigo, Mobikwik, CarDekho and Vedantu among its portfolio companies, has made a partial exit from Country Delight, scoring a 45X return on the initial bet of the seven-year-old dairytech startup.
However, the firm still holds the majority of its investment stake from Fund I in the company.
“When investing back in 2017, Orios had built a thesis on subscription commerce and had as part of the sector study met with more than 40 companies before selecting Country Delight,” the fund said in a statement.
It further added that the exit underscores the value in Orios’ strategy of identifying the best companies and investing in them early.
Founded in 2013 by Chakradhar Gade and Nitin Kaushal, Country Delight follows a subscription-based model where it sources milk from farmers and delivers it to customers’ doorsteps. Besides this, it supplies bread, ghee, other dairy products, fruits and vegetables.
The startup has raised close to $158 Mn (excluding the ongoing funding round) across multiple rounds. It counts Temasek, Matrix Partners, Orios Ventures and Elevation Capital as among its marquee investors.
Country Delight in FY22 saw its net loss surge over 6X to INR 186.4 Cr from INR 28.2 Cr, whereas the revenue from operations increased by over 1.7X to INR 542.6 Cr.
Marking the growth since its inception, the company has raised a total of 9 funding rounds and has achieved a valuation of $820 million in its latest funding round, said the statement by the company.
Rehan Yar Khan, managing partner at Orios Venture Partners, said, “We believe exceptional founders in large spaces can build special companies. With Country Delight, it has been an honour and great learning experience to watch Chakradhar and Nitin build the company, from a single product to over 140 products”
“We look at between 4000 to 5000 companies in a year to invest in 10. We have been doing this since 2008, first as private investors and then since 2014 as an AIF fund. The same process also led to the identification of Ola and Druva”
Meanwhile, Orios, launched in 2014, primarily invests in software and technology-enabled startups. Last month, Orios Venture Partners said it had returned INR 300 Cr from Fund I to its investors.
Launched in 2014, the VC firm’s Fund I was concluded with a final close at INR 300 Cr in 2015.
The fund allocated its resources, focusing significantly on marketplaces leading at 27.07%, followed by direct-to-consumer (D2C) at 17.7% and healthtech at 14.45%. Among the major portfolios from the fund include PharmEasy, Country Delight and Zostel.
Orios looks to further solidify its position with significant returns lined up in 2024 and 2025.
Orios was also one of the investors in beleaguered car servicing startup GoMechanic, which it wrote down amid controversies in the company.
In September last year, two former managing partners of Orios, Anup Jain and Rajeev Suri, stepped down from their positions to pursue other opportunities.
As per Inc42’s ‘Indian Tech Startup Funding Report 2023’, Indian startups secured a little over $10 Bn in funding by December 25, registering a 60% decline from $25 Bn raised in the year before.
