TenderCuts, an omnichannel meat and seafood brand raised Rs 110 crore ($15 million) in a round led by PE fund, Paragon Partners. The round also saw participation from NABVENTURES, an agri-food tech VC fund backed by NABARD.

Speaking about the investment, Nishanth Chandran, Founder & CEO, TenderCuts, said, “This investment will pave the way for us to enter new markets and further establish our omnichannel network. We are delighted to partner with Paragon Partners and NABVENTURES and look forward to tapping into their significant experience in growing consumer businesses in the retail, agri, food and beverage, and ecommerce sectors”.

The company will further utilize the fresh capital towards expanding its current operations and pursue organic and inorganic growth opportunities. TenderCuts will also invest in scaling up its supply chain and technology infrastructure to support innovation and accessibility of its products and services.

Based in Chennai, TenderCuts delivers antibiotic-free, hygienic, and farm fresh chicken, free range goat, and seafood. It functions through an array of physical stores along with an online platform. The company currently has 25 stores across Chennai and Hyderabad, which cater to walk-in and online customers.

TenderCuts believes that India’s meat and seafood market is worth $100 billion in size, but over 95 percent of it is unorganised. It also said that during the pandemic, there was an upsurge in activity in the organised meat segment as more people began to focus on quality, health, hygiene, and convenience.

Siddharth Parekh, Co-founder and Senior Partner, Paragon Partners, said, “We believe TenderCuts has an opportunity to leverage its robust supply chain of farmers and fishermen and its omnichannel strategy to efficiently cater to the mass market. Given our team's deep experience in retail and ecommerce, we are confident that we can help TenderCuts achieve significant scale and accelerate the shift to the organised segment”.

Rajesh Ranjan, CEO, NABVENTURES, added, “The direct-to-consumer meat market is at a nascent stage in India with less than one percent penetration. TenderCuts has been able to build a differentiated business model with omnichannel capability enabling TenderCuts to offer quality meat and seafood to the offline segment as well which is around 96 percent of the market.”