Fabindia's MD William Bissell Invests Rs 3 Cr in QSR Chain Wow! Momo for 1% Stake

The Managing Director of Fabindia, William Bissell has invested Rs 3 crore in Quick Service Restaurant chain Wow! Momo. William has picked up 1% stake in the Kolkata-headquartered firm. As part of the deal, Bissell will join the company’s board of advisors.

The current Investment has estimated the company to be valued over Rs 300 crore.

Founded in 2008 by college batch mates Sagar Daryani, Binod Homagai & Miftaur Rahman, the company has more than 120 outlets across Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune, Delhi, Chennai and Kochi.

Wow! Momo had raised their first round of equity funding of Rs 10 crore in 2015 from India Angel Network (IAN) lead by Sanjeev Bikhchandani (founder of Naukri.com), Saurabh Shristava (Padma Shri winner) & Ashvin Chadha (co-founder Anicut Capital) at a Rs 100 crore valuation. This was the biggest Investment by the IAN back then in terms of deal size & number of Investors & continues to be their biggest deal till date. A total of 93 Investors participated in the IAN round. Wow! Momo doubled their angel investors’ money in 18 months and provided a partial exit to the IAN at an IRR of over 50 % in their series B round of equity funding last year in June at a Rs 230 crore valuation. The new investor then – Lighthouse Funds invested into the company.

In the last fiscal, the company opened 65 new stores to close FY 17-18 on a 168 stores nationally. The company revenue grew from Rs 49 crore to Rs 75 crore with an estimated EBITDA of around 9% and a SSSG of over 13 %.

Wow! Momo intends to grow more aggressively this year. The team have set themselves a challenging target to open 100 new Wow! Momo stores & enter a few newer markets as well.

Recent deals in the QSR space include Charcoal Eats, which offers all-day food options at various price points, raised Rs 5 crore ($742,000) in its pre-Series A round of funding from a clutch of angel investors last month and Yellow Tie Hospitality Management LLP, a food and beverage franchise management company, acquired a controlling stake in three quick-service restaurant brands—Umraan, Wok This Way and Health Juice Centre, in the same month.