Rebel Foods (B): The Simmering Unicorn

Launched in 2011, Rebel Foods pioneered the concept of the cloud kitchen in an age when online ordering and home delivery made it possible for restaurants to sell food without a physical store front. Having pivoted from a loss-making India-based chain to a profitable global food-tech company by developing an operating platform to efficiently manage across brands and kitchens, Rebel’s business grew 9x between 2015 and 2020. By 2021 the Mumbai-based company had become the world’s largest restaurant platform with 4,000 virtual restaurants, over 350 cloud kitchens in 40 cities across India, Indonesia, UAE, UK, Malaysia, Singapore and Bangladesh. In the next five years, the plan was to be in over 100 cities, with over 1,000 kitchens.

The case illustrates the many pivots made by a quick service food business that utilizes tech to revolutionalise the way food is produced and sold. It exemplifies a nimble start-up that adapts to the changing operating environment and imagines new ways of doing things in an age-old business.