Orios Venture Partners sells nearly 3% stake in Country Delight for Rs 225 crore

Orios Venture Partners has made a partial exit from direct-to-consumer (D2C) fresh food brand Country Delight for around Rs 225 crore. People familiar with the matter said the early-stage venture capital firm has sold about a 3% stake in Country Delight to Temasek-backed asset management group Seviora. Orios had invested Rs 15 crore in Country Delight from its Fund-I, of which the first cheque of Rs 3 crore was infused in 2017.

The firm had subsequently invested additional sums in Country Delight through its later funds.Across all its investments in the D2C company, Orios held 21-22% stake in Country Delight prior to the partial exit.On January 5, ET reported that the Gurugram-based company raised around $20 million (around Rs 164 crore) in a funding round led by one of its existing investors, Singapore’s sovereign fund Temasek.

Another existing backer, Venturi Partners, also participated, in addition to Seviora, which invested through its agriculture and food-focused investment vehicle Seviora T3F Fund. The round valued Country Delight at around $820 million. Orios launched Fund-I in 2014, with a final close of Rs 300 crore in 2015. In January, the Mumbai-based investment firm announced that it had returned the initial corpus to its limited partners, or sponsors of the fund.

Among the various sectors, Fund-I allocated 27% of its corpus to ecommerce marketplaces, followed by D2C at 18%, and healthtech at 14%. Key portfolio companies that emerged from the fund include Country Delight, PharmEasy, Intelligence Node, and Zostel. Orios also counts BatterySmart, Vedantu, Ixigo, Mobikwik and CarDekho among its portfolio companies. It had also backed beleaguered car repair startup GoMechanic but had to eventually write off the investment after GoMechanic’s founders admitted to financial wrongdoing.

The Rehan Yar Khan-led investment firm also saw two of its managing partners Anup Jain and Rajeev Suri depart in September 2023.