Exclusive: Blume Venture-backed MonkeyBox temporarily shuts down

Update: MonkeyBox has shut down the service temporarily and claims to resume operations at some point in future.

School kid-focused nutritious meal delivery startup MonkeyBox has temporarily shut down its operations. The Bengaluru-based startup seems to have failed to garner required traction to keep afloat.

The development came as a surprise for many as the Blume Venture-backed startup has been planning on expanding its business to other cities. In December last year, it acquired 75 In A Box, a corporate-focused healthy food delivery company.

The acquisition also marked an increase in companies offering to adult age group.

The startup has confirmed the news via its website and said from 23rd March 2018 the operation will be temporarily terminated and it will start refund process on 26th March 2018.

MonkeyBox co-founders added that the startup is unable to fulfill its promise and the team will work on new strategies before resuming the service.

MonkeyBox was the second startup for co-founders Sanjay Rao, Sandeep Kannambadi and Vijay Bharadwaj which has halted its operations. Earlier, the trio had floated a sports analytics platform called SportingMindz in 2006, which was also backed by Blume Ventures.

However, SportingMindz ran for six years before going into oblivion.

With 2,00,000 meals served till date and FSSAI certified kitchens, MonkeyBox claims to have 6,000 subscribers and processes nearly 12,000 orders daily across 150 schools in the south, east and the northern suburbs of Bengaluru.

In May last year, MonkeyBox had also acquired Delhi-based cold-pressed juice manufacturer and delivery firm RawKing in an all-cash deal.

Apart from Blume, it also has raised around $2 million in funding from investors such as NB Ventures, and Nspira. The last round of funding for MonkeyBox came in July 2017 as a part of pre-Series A round. However, the amount was not disclosed.

The suspension of service also raised a question on meal delivery startup who fail to serve despite raising funds. The demise of MonkeyBox certainly hints that scope of dedicated food solution for kids is yet to be sizeable opportunity to reckon with.