September 21, 2022: Farmers Fresh Zone, an IAN-backed D2C fresh FnV online marketplace in South India, has announced that it has acquired AM Needs, one of the leading milk subscription delivery platforms, for an undisclosed amount. With this acquisition, Farmers Fresh Zone adds country milk and value-added products to its portfolio and moves one step closer to being a good food culture brand. It will provide adulteration-free country milk to its huge quality-conscious consumer base. 

 

AM Needs was founded in 2019 by Sujith Sudhakaran and Ranjith Balan. Over the years, they have successfully built a technology stack and platform to ensure the delivery of fresh items to customers before 7 am every day. The delivery platform is present in four cities in Kerala and excels in offering products like milk, vegetables, and breakfast essentials. It currently associates with Milma (Kerala Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation) and other milk brands along with fresh country milk and delivered more than 1.2 million orders last year. 

 

This acquisition provides a scaled presence to Farmers Fresh Zone in the USD 144 billion milk market. In September 2021, Farmers Fresh Zone announced INR 6 crore Pre-Series A funding led by IAN. The organization is currently growing at 3X YoY and targets to hit INR 1000 crore revenue in the next five years.  

 

Pradeep PS, Founder & CEO of Farmers Fresh Zone, said, “Farm to fork, traceability, healthy diets are the clear trends in the food sector. With this acquisition, we add locally sourced pure country milk offerings to our portfolio. The companies together are set to serve one of the largest consumer markets in India. The move puts us ahead of the market by offering its customers subscription-based milk, vegetables, and other fresh products. Using the AI-based demand-driven production planning module – Captain Farm – we can ensure food safety and traceability for the ‘fresh’ category. With this, we will be further expanding our portfolio.”

 

Sujith Sudhakaran, Co-founder and CEO of AM Needs, said, “We see tremendous scope after the collaboration. We, along with Farmers Fresh Zone, can bring a lot of value to our customers.”

 

Nagaraja Prakasam, Lead Angel investor and Board Member at FFZ says “Farmers Fresh Zone journey
has been impactful both to the consumer and farmer. Apart from selling Fruits, Vegetables now our
farmers can sell their Milk as well through this combined entity helping them to earn more income from
their farms, providing them a diverse revenue stream. FFZ pioneered ‘Know your farmer’ now customers
can ‘know their milk’ as well.”

 

Padmaja Ruparel, Co-founder, IAN & Founding Partner, IAN Fund said, “Consumers today are aware about their food and the impact that it has on their health. The only way to ensure food safety in a fresh category is to build the farm to fork supply chain. Farmers Fresh Zone has built that for Fresh Produce and now are extending to Fresh Milk Category through this Acquisition. This will give access to consumers get Milk, Breakfast essentials along with Fruits and Vegetables. Since the process is data driven, it will create a trust in the brand which stands for 100% Fresh, 0% Added Residue.”

 

Consumers today are aware of their food and the impact it has on their health. The only way to ensure food safety in the fresh category is to build the farm-to-fork supply chain. Farmers Fresh Zone has built that for the fresh produce. Now, the company is extending to the fresh milk category through this association. This will give consumers access to Milk, breakfast essentials, along with fruits and vegetables. Since the process is data-driven, it will create trust in the brand, which stands for 100% fresh and zero added residue.  

 

About Farmers Fresh Zone 

 

Farmers Fresh Zone is one of India’s leading Fresh Produce D2C brands. Farmers Fresh Zone commercialized its operations in 2018 to make better quality & safe food available to more people at affordable prices. Its products are directly sourced from the local farmers within 16 hours of harvest by giving them a fair price and eliminating the middlemen from the food supply chain and reinventing it. This allows Farmers Fresh Zone to ensure its products are free of harmful residues. They operate in five cities – Kochi, Trivandrum, Thrissur, Kottayam, and Coimbatore. Farmers Fresh Zone has a wide array of products ranging from residue-free vegetables, fruits, cuts, salads, and much more. Farmers Fresh Zone has also developed unit-level traceability, allowing customers to see product’s origin.

 

About IAN:

Indian Angel Network is India’s first and world’s largest business angel network with close to 500 members across the world, comprising the who’s who of successful entrepreneurs and dynamic CEOs. With investors from 12 countries, IAN’s presence spans 7 locations, which includes cities in India and the UK. The network is sector agnostic and has funded start-ups across 19 sectors in India and 7 other countries growing global footprint companies. With an excellent track record, IAN has been giving excellent cash exits year-on-year to its investor members, for the last 12 years. Some of its marquee investee companies include Druva, Spinny, Box8, Uniphore, WOW Momos, Consure, Fareye, NOCCARC, Propelld, Skit.ai amongst many others.

IAN Fund, an INR 375 crore VC fund is a uniquely differentiated seed/early stage Fund that aims to transform India’s entrepreneurial landscape. The fund invests in innovative companies in sectors including healthcare and medical devices, VR, AI, software as a service, marketplaces, fin-tech, big data, artificial intelligence, agritech, and hardware. With this, IAN has created the single largest platform for seed and early-stage investing, enabling entrepreneurs to raise from Rs. 25 lakhs to Rs. 50 crores.