Agri & Agritech
Waycool raised private equity led by LGT Impact and structured debt
About
Waycool
WayCool Foods and Products Pvt. Ltd. is a leading food distribution platform, distributing fruits & vegetables, staples and dairy. WayCool has developed pan-India sourcing capabilities and sources 70% of its products directly from farmers and farming partners (total farmer base of 35,000). WayCool serves both food services and retail distribution touch-points and is the only multi-category, multi-channel, multi-region Agri-tech enterprise.
LGT
LGT is the largest Private Banking and Asset Management Group in the world that is wholly owned by an entrepreneurial family, with over $200 billion of Assets Under Management. LGT Impact focuses on investment sectors with opportunities to improve the quality of life of billions of underserved consumers, aligning with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and invests in education, healthcare, energy, agriculture, and information and communication technology sectors.
Background
We are pleased to announce that our client, Waycool Foods and Products Pvt. Ltd. (“WayCool”), has raised ₹120 crores as a combination of equity and structured debt from LGT Impact, prominent angels and institutional lenders, including Northern Arc Capital and Caspian.
WayCool, founded in July 2015 by Karthik Jayaraman and Sanjay Dasari, is India’s fastest growing food distribution platform, leveraging innovative technology to scale-up and operate a complex supply chain. The company operates a full-stack, broadline product range across multiple channels and categories like fresh produce, staples and dairy, serving over 4,000 clients. WayCool is currently operational in 13 locations across Southern India.
Veda Corporate Advisors (“VedaCorp”) was the exclusive financial advisor to the Company and Its shareholders. VedaCorp provided comprehensive transaction advisory services including deal structuring and negotiation of key commercial terms, leading to the successful closure of the transaction.
This marks VedaCorp’s 2nd transaction in the Food & Agri space in the last quarter. This also marks VedaCorp’s 11th transaction overall in the Food/Agri space & reaffirms our credentials as a leading investment bank in this segment”.
“We chose to work with VedaCorp because they put in substantial effort to understand what we were building, rather than slot us into a template. VedaCorp has not only steered the fund-raising process clinically, but have also been true thought partners with us and helped us refine our own thinking”
Karthik Jayaraman
Co-founder, WayCool Foods & Products
“WayCool has demonstrated excellent execution capabilities and has built significant scale across food product categories in a short period with optimal use of capital. This investment will provide further impetus for WayCool in building India’s largest food distribution platform”
Atul Saraogi
Associate Director at Veda Corporate Advisors