TenderCuts targets 22 new stores in 12 months

The company undertook restructuring over the past two years, shifting to smaller neighbourhood stores with a lean capex model. The rebuilt business now has 40,000 monthly active transacting users, an 85% repeat rate and blended customer acquisition cost below Rs 100, with revenue predominantly driven by organic and repeat customers. “Over the last year, we have moved away from growth at any cost and rebuilt TenderCuts around disciplined store economics, lower operating costs, reduced discounting and wastage, and profitable micro-market expansion.

Every new store is now evaluated on its path to break-even and capital payback before we scale further,” Kallanai said. The founder added that this has caused the shift from near closure two years ago to EBITDA-positive operations today. “Our focus now is to make profitability repeatable and scalable without compromising affordability or quality,” he added. 

For FY26, TenderCuts reported gross revenue of Rs 65.65 crore and net revenue of Rs 62.82 crore. The company has achieved positive EBITDA at both the store and consolidated levels. The firm is targeting an annualised revenue run-rate of approximately Rs 220 crore during FY27. “The priority is to achieve this growth while maintaining disciplined unit economics and positive EBITDA,” Kallanai said. Its current revenue split includes 60% online and 40% offline stores. It expects the split to become more even in the next few quarters. 

Omnichannel Advantage

“FY26 was an important year in TenderCuts’ evolution as a retail-first omnichannel fresh meat and seafood business. Our operating model is differentiated in that every TenderCuts store functions as both a physical retail outlet and an online fulfilment unit,” Kallanai pointed out. He added that the firm doesn’t operate a separate dark-store layer, allowing it to utilise the same infrastructure, inventory and teams to serve customers across channels. 

During FY26, the firm also strengthened the technology backbone supporting this model, integrating inventory management, order management, store operations, fulfilment and customer engagement into a more unified ecosystem. Today, its technology enables it to manage approximately 40,000 orders per month, across more than 250 SKUs, while maintaining an average delivery time of 30 minutes.

It has also strengthened its customer-facing digital ecosystem across its app and website, while improving data-led customer engagement, retention and personalisation. On the product side, it has expanded beyond core fresh chicken, mutton and seafood into ready-to-cook, eggs, masalas and other protein-led categories. These categories currently contribute approximately 10% of its overall revenue. “The objective has been to build an integrated fresh-protein platform where technology improves availability, quality control, operational efficiency and customer experience across both offline and online channels,” Kallanai said .

Funding Strategy

In April 2026, TenderCuts raised $2 million in debt from Lakme Finance. The funding supported inventory and supply-chain requirements, store operations and the working capital necessary to scale the business sustainably. It is currently evaluating the next funding round in line with its growth milestones and capital requirements. “At this stage, our focus is not simply on raising capital to expand the number of stores, but on demonstrating a strong, repeatable and profitable operating model,” Kallanai said.

The next round of capital would also support investments in technology, supply-chain capabilities, product expansion and customer experience. For FY27, the firm is targeting close to 100% growth in monthly active transacting users from the current base of approximately 40,000. “We expect this to be driven primarily by increased store density and repeat usage, while keeping blended customer acquisition cost below Rs 100 and maintaining our strong repeat rate,” Kallanai said.