Stellapps Technologies, a dairy-tech company, has raised $26 million in equity and debt in its Series C funding round.
The round saw participation from existing investors including Blume Ventures, Omnivore, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IDH Farmfit Fund, 500 Startups & Blue Ashva Capital and new investor Miledeep Capital. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), provided the debt funding.
Stellapps is also backed by Celesta Capital, Nutreco, Qualcomm Ventures, ABB Technology Ventures, Venture Highway, Binny Bansal, BEENEXT and Arun Seed.
The funds will be used to accelerate its mooMark business. mooMark is focused on contract manufacturing and privately labelled dairy business of high-quality value-added dairy products, that are both sustainable and traceable.
Ranjith Mukundan, CEO of Stellapps, opined, “We are excited to receive continued commitment from our existing investors and welcome aboard new investors as part of our Series C round. This capital will help mooMark scale its value-added dairy product offering to its customers across India in a sustainable manner and strengthen its export segment going forward.”
Vikram Gawande, Lead – Growth Investments, Blume stated, “Stellapps to us stands for traceability and quality dairy. Ranjith and his team have built a robust and distinctive supply-side network for traceable milk by utilizing their technological expertise. The recent funding will enable them to rapidly increase demand for their Value-Added Dairy Products (VADP), positioning them as a formidable profitable supplier in the market.”
Kiran Ch, Chief Strategy Officer at Miledeep Capital said, “Miledeep is excited to have invested in Stellapps as they work towards bringing traceability and sustainability across the dairy supply chain. We are proud to be part of this journey, supporting Stellapps and their brand mooMark in their mission to offer high-quality, traceable dairy products that empower farmers, reduce environmental impact, and transform the dairy ecosystem.”
James Polan, DFC’s Vice President of Health & Agribusiness said, “DFC is pleased to support the promotion of farm-level traceability and increased farmer incomes in India’s dairy sector. DFC’s loan to mooMark Private Limited will support the company’s expansion into fully traceable value-added dairy product offerings and promote the inclusion of at least 200,000 smallholder dairy farmers in mooMark’s supply chain.”
Founded in 2011 by Mukundan, Ravishankar G Shiroor, Praveen Nale, Ramakrishna Adukuri and Venkatesh Seshasayee, the Bengaluru-based firm is a farm-to-consumer dairy digitisation service provider. It focuses on improving productivity and quality while ensuring end-to-end traceability across the dairy supply chain.
While Stellapps started as a Dairy IoT solutions, over a period it has established itself in contract manufacturing and private labeling of value-added dairy products under the “mooMark” brand.
Incubated at IIT-Madras, Stellapps’ dairy tech is deployed in over 42,000 villages, enabling the movement of more than 14 million liters of milk every day.
The company utilises a low-capex and tech-powered approach to deliver these products to Indian and global customers. Their sophisticated tech stack improves traceability and sustainability, ensuring that mooMark products are completely traceable and help in reducing the carbon footprint, especially at the farm level. This allows FMCG, D2C, and HoReCa businesses to offer premium, unique dairy products that support their Net Zero goals.
It serves around 150 clients, including Unilever, Punjab Paneer, FreshToHome and Namdhari besides hotels, restaurants, and cafés (Horeca).