Lucknow, July 30: Arboreal Bioinnovations Private Limited, India’s first specialty food and nutraceutical ingredients technology company, announced the successful close of its INR 230 crore Series A funding round. EAAA, the alternatives arm of Edelweiss and Omnivore co-led the funding round, with continued backing from existing investor Rainmatter by Zerodha.
The transaction represents one of the largest Series A fundraises in India’s specialty food ingredients sector. Arboreal will deploy the capital to expand its manufacturing capacity, strengthen its research and development capabilities, and accelerate the commercialization of its next generation of functional ingredients.
Arboreal has built a differentiated “contextual innovation” model focused on developing ingredient solutions for the specific nutritional, functional, sensory and commercial requirements of Indian consumers and brands. This approach has enabled hundreds of emerging and challenger brands to launch category-defining products and scale rapidly across the food, beverage and nutraceutical markets.
The company’s integrated ingredient technology platform brings together ingredient engineering, process research and development, formulation science and precision manufacturing. Arboreal has developed and commercialized proprietary ingredients across next-generation proteins, cocoa-based ingredients, natural zero-calorie sweeteners and functional fibres, with several additional ingredient platforms currently under development.
Having more than doubled its growth year-on-year, Arboreal’s portfolio of “better-for-you” ingredients and its “ingredient-first innovation” model have supported more than 300 product launches across over 1,100 consumer brands and nutraceutical manufacturers during the past 18 months.
Commenting on the development:
Swati Pandey, Co-Founder and CEO, Arboreal Bioinnovations, said,
“This fundraise is a strong validation of the direction we are taking as a company. It gives us the fuel to accelerate our mission of building clean, science-led solutions that address some of the world’s most pressing nutritional and food challenges, with innovation originating in India and reaching consumers globally.
Manish Chauhan, Co-Founder and COO, Arboreal Bioinnovations, said,
“This fundraise marks an important milestone in Arboreal’s journey from building IP led ingredient technologies to enabling big shifts across categories through ingredient first innovation. The confidence shown by EAAA, Omnivore and Rainmatter validates both the strength of our platform and the opportunity ahead of us. It gives us the ability to invest more deeply in science, manufacturing, talent and long-term innovation, while building a platform capable of creating differentiated ingredients for some of the world’s most important food and nutraceutical brands. We are excited to build Arboreal into a globally respected ingredient technology company from India.
Ashish Agarwal, Managing Director, Private Equity, EAAA Alternatives, added,
“ The investment in Arboreal reflects the core philosophy of our Fund’sstrategy – backing businesses with the potential to emerge as category leaders. As the first investment from our Discovery Fund II, we are particularly excited at the long term growth prospects of Arboreal’s next-generation yeast protein products We look forward to working with Swati and Manish as they continue to build category leadership in R&D-led nutraceutical ingredients.”
Jinesh Shah, Managing Partner at Omnivore, said
, “The shift toward clean-label and functional foods requires engineered ingredients that deliver clear health benefits without sacrificing taste or margins. Arboreal fills a critical market gap with locally developed formulations. From sweetener alternatives to novel yeast proteins and collagens, Arboreal’s R&D stack positions them to power the next wave of health and wellness brands.”
Dinesh Pai, Head of investments at Rainmatter, said,
“We all lament that India does not allocate capital for enough R&D. Aside from all the things everyone else shared in their reasoning for the investment, we truly wanted to back Swati and Manish in building a world class R&D team working on food ingredients from India. We believe that they are the right team, with exceptional grit to chase down this problem. Rainmatter exists to back these audacious bets, and this is one of them. “