A company that promises “farm to fork” freshness now wants to go “farm to Dalal Street.” DSM Fresh Foods (Zappfresh) is bringing a ₹59.65 crore IPO, priced at a spicy ₹96–101 per share. While your local butcher gives you chicken at ₹250/kg, Zappfresh wants a valuation of ₹225 crore for serving chicken nuggets with a mobile app. Because why stop at eating chicken when you can also burn cash chasing CACs (customer acquisition costs)?
2. Introduction
India loves chicken. From Hyderabad biryani to Delhi’s butter chicken, from Bengaluru pubs to Kolkata rolls—there’s poultry in every second plate. But the unorganized meat market in India is notorious: dodgy hygiene, questionable freshness, and butchers who never heard of HACCP certification. Enter Zappfresh—an online meat delivery company founded in 2015, promising to solve this “dirty meat” problem with “fresh, hygienic, app-based, QR-code traceable” chicken.
Sounds good, right? Just one small problem: every startup that has tried to become “the BigBasket of meat” has either sold off to Reliance or quietly shut down after blowing through investor money. FreshToHome, Licious, TenderCuts—all have raised hundreds of crores. Zappfresh, meanwhile, is coming to BSE SME with a ₹59 crore IPO, hoping retail investors will fund its next marketing blitz.
The funny part? They claim “efficient farm-to-fork supply chain.” Yet their borrowings ballooned from ₹2 crore in FY23 to ₹31 crore in FY25. Efficient, sure—efficient at pulling loans.
So the question for investors is: will this IPO deliver you “juicy returns” or leave you with “frozen losses”? Let’s carve it up.
3. Business Model – WTF Do They Even Do?
DSM Fresh Foods operates under the brand Zappfresh. Think of it as Swiggy for raw chicken, but without the fries.
Core Products: Fresh meat (chicken, mutton, seafood, pork), ready-to-cook kebabs, cold cuts like sausages, marinated meats like tikka wings. Basically, everything you’d normally buy from the “Non-Veg” counter, except delivered with a nice logo and “freshness guaranteed” tagline.
Tech Layer: They have an app with 100k downloads. The pitch: customers order on app, company sources directly from farms, delivers same day. So you’re paying extra for the QR code on your chicken breast.
Farm to Fork Claim: They say they cut out middlemen. But given their debt pile, looks like the middleman is still sitting in the balance sheet—just renamed “working capital requirement.”
Target Audience: Urban millennials who want Instagrammable chicken salami, not messy butcher shops. Basically, “Uber-for-chicken” vibes.
So yeah, in short: they sell chicken online, burn money on ads, and now want to raise IPO cash to fund more ads. Sounds familiar? (Hint: every food-tech startup ever).
4. Financials Overview
Let’s see if Zappfresh is more than just fancy packaging.
Source table
Metric
FY25
FY24
FY23
YoY % (FY25 vs FY24)
YoY % (FY24 vs FY23)
Revenue (₹ Cr)
131.47
90.68
56.61
45% ↑
60% ↑
EBITDA (₹ Cr)
17.05
9.58
3.41
78% ↑
181% ↑
PAT (₹ Cr)
9.05
4.67
2.74
94% ↑
70% ↑
EPS (₹)
5.53*
2.85
1.67
94% ↑
71% ↑
*Pre-issue EPS. Post-issue EPS = ₹4.06.
Commentary:
Revenue growth is impressive. Clearly, Delhiites are ordering more chicken than petrol.
PAT almost doubled in FY25, but margins are razor-thin (5.2%). You sneeze in a poultry shed and the profit flies away.
