MonkeyBox getting ready to serve meals again

Entrepreneurship is a game of patience, resilience, commitment, and if someone is making a comeback with the same product, then great courage as well. After facing a shutdown like situation and suspending operations for more than 20 months, school kids-focused nutritious meal delivery startup MonkeyBox is about to go live again.

"MonkeyBox will go live by January 2020 with focus on parents and kids and the company will have a bigger mandate on kids requirements," said Sanjay Rao, CEO of MonkeyBox, in a response to Entrackr's queries.

The company, which started in 2015, was founded by Rao, Sandeep Kannambadi and Vijay Bharadwaj. While Kannambadi left the Bengaluru-based startup in November 2018, Bharadwaj will continue as an advisor for the Blume Venture-backed company.

The trio had earlier floated the sports analytics platform SportingMindz in 2006. The company, also funded by Blume, halted operations in 2012.

With $2 million VC fund in the kitty, MonkeyBox claimed to have served 2,00,000 meals, brought 6,000 subscribers and processed nearly 12,000 orders daily across 150 schools in Bengaluru before the termination of operations.

The company had also made a couple of acquisitions to expand its services in the city and was planning to test other cities as well. However, it was their tryst with B2B model which forced the company to pull the plug.

In an interview with The Ken, Rao had said that MonkeyBox failed to cope with the B2B model and their rapid expansion plan which further led to losses.

Unlike the B2C model, payments made in B2B takes over 60 days to come in. And the company had to face working capital issues due to delay in payments.

Expenses, including hiring temporary staff, increased the team size to 250 in two months and decentralising kitchens across cities to maintain quality, had also become uncontrollable.

In what will be a lone battle for Rao, MonkeyBox will be counted among rare startups which have made a comeback after halting operations for a long period.

Going forward, it would be interesting to watch how Rao and the team have learned from past mistakes and serve food to the kids once again.