Isthara, India’s premium co-living brand and Smart Food Court pioneer, has raised fresh funding of $10 million led by Dubai-based Eagle Investments. The current funding round brings Isthara’s total fund-raise to about $21 million.
Isthara, which currently operates in the co-living and institutional smart food court space, will deploy the new funds to foray into the B2C retail food court space and expand its presence in the co-living sector. While Isthara has witnessed immense growth in the B2B institutional cafeteria segment, the company aims to replicate this business success in the B2C space by launching smart food courts across retail locations such as malls, with an aim to become the pan-India market leader in the food court segment. Additionally, with the company’s foray in to the B2C food retail segment, it will also be able to widen the customer base potential and not be limited by a captive audience as is the case with institutional cafeterias. Isthara aims to scale the food court business by 10X to 500 food courts across 30 cities in the next 3 years, catering to a million people on a monthly basis. Additionally, the funding will also be utilized to double bed capacity in the company’s co-living and student accommodation segments to around 50,000 beds by 2025, and the company aims to achieve a 10X revenue growth in the next 3 years.
Founded in 2017, Isthara, placing tech at the core of its business, has been revolutionizing the co-living segment by providing fully-furnished shared-living accommodation for working professionals and students, with a host of amenities paired with premium features. In 2020, the company ventured into a new segment by pioneering the digitized smart food court business, and transforming conventional institutional food courts across educational institutes and corporates.
