CHENNAI: Chennai-based agritech company WayCool Foods plans to expand its footprint into western India and Middle-Eastern countries. The company, which celebrated its sixth foundation day on Thursday, said that despite the pandemic, it grew and improved its efficiency.
Karthik Jayaraman, chief executive officer and co-founder, WayCool Foods and Products Pvt Ltd, said, “We have achieved many milestones this year despite the challenges, and crossed an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of `1000 crore in June. This represents a four-times growth over the same period last year, and puts us on track to achieve our annual revenue goals.”
“We have also increased our customer base by four times in the past year. Over the next few years, we plan to further invest in, and leverage deep tech and automation to enhance our efficiency. We will also expand our sales footprint to Western India and the Middle East,” Jayaraman added.
Among the methods WayCool uses to increase efficiency are intelligent cross-docking for dry groceries, AI-led grading of grains and pulses, and robotised handling of fresh produce. This has helped save 70 per cent on working hours, making WayCool 50 per cent more efficient than the industry standard, the company said.
The company claims to work with a base of 80,000 farmers across South India, not just through commercial partnerships but also through their agricultural extension program, Outgrow, to increase their income by as much as 30 per cent. Outgrow is a multilingual app that provides a range of services to farmers, such as soil testing, AI-based disease identification, market-price benchmarks, weather inputs and videos that share good agricultural practices.
WayCool also plans to expand its workforce from 1,250 to 3,000 in the next few years.