Cold chain startup Celcius raises $4.5 M in bridge funding round

Celcius, a cold chain marketplace startup, has raised $4.5 million in a bridge funding round with Mumbai Angels, Supply Chain Labs, Endurance Capital, VCats, Keiretsu Forum, Huddle, EVAN and others.

"This round is part of the larger Series A funding that the brand is aiming to close for $10 million in the coming months," reads the release.

In August last year, Celcius received $500,000 in a seed fund round from Mumbai Angels Network, along with Huddle, Lumis Partners, Venture Capital & Private Equity firms MaGEHold, Keiretsu Forum, Eaglewings Ventures Alliance Network (EVAN), and investors from Malaysia, Nigeria, and the US. The brand successfully utilized the funds to scale up its operations and diversify the services on its platform by integrating WMS (Warehouse Management System) and TMS (Transportation Management System).

The Mumbai-based startup will utilize the freshly infused capital to expand geographically to over 500 cities this year. The brand will also allocate some funds towards growing its tech, sales and operations team and working on development programmes to aid small-scale and regional transporters across the country.

"The newly acquired funds will allow us to stay on the momentum of scaling up our operations across the country. We plan on expanding our reach to over 500 cities, and to support the country by transporting Covid-19 vaccines and other essential perishables to remote locations. We also recently launched Vahan Vikas Samriddhi Programme, through which we aim at financially supporting regional transport entrepreneurs and encouraging them to venture into the cold chain segment. The funds will help us further this initiative."- Swarup Bose, founder and CEO, Celcius.

Prajakt Raut, managing partner, Supply Chain labs said, "The cold logistics in India is not only woefully inadequate but also utilizes the existing infrastructure inefficiently. In such a situation, the Celcius model of aggregating stakeholders in the cold logistics sector and facilitating collaboration among them is something that the country desperately needs. It is an extremely large market even now, and efficiencies brought in by Celcius will expand the market multi-fold as they are fostering fresh investments into the sector from local entrepreneurs who are setting up new cold storages and deploying new refrigerated vehicles through Celcius' services. There is a tremendous potential to grow, and we look forward to supporting them in their journey."

Celcius offers a technology-driven approach to build a well-connected network of shippers and transporters across the country while accounting for the time spent in transit. Since its launch in November 2020, Celcius has on-boarded 2500 vehicles, 107 Cold storages, increased operations in over 150 cities, and exhibited over 20 times the initial predicted growth. The brand has also tied up with finance institutions like Shriram Transport and Finance Company and with OEMs like Ashok Leyland and Tata.