Cheelizza Raises INR 4.11 Crore Seed Fund From IAN The company plans to use the fund to hyperscale the business and expand geographically
By Teena Jose
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Cheelizza – India Ka Pizza, a Mumbai-based pure vegetarian pizza chain from Mumbai, has raised INR 4.11 crore in a Seed funding round led by the Indian Angel Network (IAN). The round was led by IAN Investors Hari Balasubramanian, Uday Chatterjee, Deval Tibrewal and Rajeev Sarda. The round also saw participation from Sagar Daryani (founder of Wow! Momo), Karan Tanna,(founder of Ghost Kitchens), and Rahul Surana (principal at an international fund). The company plans to use the fund to hyperscale the business and expand geographically.
"We have been operating in stealth mode over the last 10 years, focused on building the business on strong fundamentals. Cheelizza is the first step towards building a portfolio of pure Vegetarian food brands offering an alternative choice to a large vegetarian population. Over the next 10 years, we will be working on building an Indian pure veg platform built on strong fundamentals of high value, higher quality and highest trust and take it global. We are very grateful to IAN for supporting us and helping us on our growth journey. We will use this capital to hyperscale our business and expand geographically," said Animesh Lodha, founder, Cheelizza.
Cheelizza will focus on rapidly expanding their presence in Mumbai by opening 20 new stores in the next 12 months. The homegrown pizza chain is already hiring talent across senior leadership roles in business, operations, HR, marketing, along with more than 100 team members for their frontline store operations, claimed by the company in a statement.
"Cheelizza is uniquely positioned as a pure vegetarian brand and has a vision to become a global pure vegetarian food platform to serve customers across the globe. Animesh and his team are go-getters and we are extremely confident that they would be able to build a portfolio of pure vegetarian food brands which will emerge as a category leader in the QSR space," said Hari Balasubramanian, lead investor, IAN.
Founded in 2013 by Animesh Lodha, 'Cheelizza - India Ka Pizza' is a fast growing vegetarian pizza chain focused on targeting vegetarians across the country.
