In late June Russian fund AddVenture teamed up with the Moscow Seed Fund, the venture arm of the Moscow city authorities, to inject a second investment tranche into Moscow startup ChefMarket.ru, following an initial investment in December last year.
ChefMarket offers home delivery of food products based on recipes from renowned Russian and West-European chefs. Along with groceries, customers receive step-by-step photo instructions. The concept is close to that of Western startups Blue Apron – which raised $50 million in April, – Hellofresh and Plated.
The startup was founded in summer 2012 by Sergey Ashin, a London Business School graduate and former consultant at McKinsey, in a bid to “revolutionize the notion of preparing food at home.”
ChefMarket currently delivers to hundreds of clients in Moscow every day, Rusbase reported.
Chefmarket.ru has several competitors in Moscow and other Russian cities. However, “all of our competitors, taken together, deliver in a month what we normally deliver in a day,” Ashin claimed a few months ago.
The second investment tranche, which amounted to $300,000, will be used to add more recipes and take the project to St Petersburg.
A portfolio of German fund Rocket Internet, HelloFresh may try to enter Russia in the not so distant future, according to Rusbase.
Sources: RVC, AddVenture
