There are few women leaders in the unicorn club (start-ups with a valuation of US$1 billion), but Rashmi Daga is well on her way to changing that. Within three years of launching the healthy foodtech company FreshMenu, she has already hit 5,00,000 orders a month in an extremely competitive delivery market, and expects to achieve a revenue of Rs. 300 crore and become profitable by the end of the 2018-19 financial year. She is also currently reported to be in talks to close a Series-C round of funding for approximately Rs. 500 crore, which will reportedly catapult the company’s value to over Rs. 1,600 crore, and fuel her plans to set up new kitchens and expand to several new cities (FreshMenu currently only operates in Bengaluru, Mumbai and NCR). Before turning entrepreneur in 2014, Daga, an IIM-Ahmedabad graduate, led and managed several start-ups in capacities ranging from sales to operations. FreshMenu offers rotating menus of world cuisine, and includes healthy options like ketofriendly meals and salad options, and is delivered by its own delivery agents. Its biggest differentiating factor is that it operates from about 35 cloud kitchens—most places usually have one big centralised kitchen, but having cloud kitchens means your delivery time is shorter and more efficient. Due to these disruptive strategies, FreshMenu’s end-to-end turnaround time is fast, and makes it a key player in the segment.
