MonkeyBox to acquire RawKing; foray into health fruit juice segment

MonkeyBox, the Bangalore-based startup delivering nutritious meals to school children, has acquired RawKing, a cold-pressed juice manufacturer and delivery startup based out of Delhi. The deal will help MonkeyBox to venture into cold-pressed juice industry, and will manufacture the same for both school children and households. MonkeyBox is currently operational only in Bangalore where it offers healthy meals for school children.

Sanjay Rao, cofounder of MonkeyBox, said that “Parents who have subscribed for MonkeyBox meals for their children were also asking for healthy fruit juices to be part of it. We didn’t want to offer the sugar-heavy ones currently available and decided to have our own production unit, which is when we decided to acquire RawKing”. The company has raised ~$0.5 million from Blume and other angel investors in December’15.

On the contrary, RawKing is bootstrapped so far and shy away from the venture capitals. Navneet Misra, cofounder of RawKing, commented that “Since we were bootstrapped, we were finding it difficult to scale, especially in the face of competition in this space. Moreover, we didn’t want to raise venture capital since it could have taken our product away from its original health focus to something more distribution friendly. Our philosophy of offering healthy juices matched with MonkeyBox, which led to the deal”.