Immi CEO: $10M Funding to Drive Expansion as Brand Moves Past ‘Zero to One Phase’

Last week, plant-based ramen startup immi announced it raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Touch Capital and featuring a slate of celebrity investors such as tennis pro Naomi Osaka and R&B singer Usher. Now, the company is looking to quadruple its retail footprint this year and bring manufacturing up to pace as demand rises.

Founded by entrepreneurs Kevin Lee and Kevin Chanthasiriphan – who frequently refer to one another as KLee and Kchan – Immi launched online in January 2021 and made its first retail launch last April in five regions of Whole Foods. While the founders believed that strong DTC sales in their first year would set them up well for retail success, Lee said the brand moved faster than expected.

“Right out the gate we blew through … the category average, and that gave KChan and I a lot of confidence that we wanted to double down in retail,” Lee said.

With the new financing supporting the growth, immi is hoping to expand its footprint exponentially over the coming months. The brand is currently available in around 500 stores, including The Fresh Market and Wegmans, and by June anticipates doubling that footprint to 1,000 locations, Lee said, and Chanthasiriphan added that they hope to be in 2,000 doors by the end of the year.

“We think it’s a reasonable growth pace while not overstretching ourselves from a trade perspective,” Chanthasiriphan said. “But it also gives us the opportunity to really test and continue to grow the market in the natural channel before we venture beyond natural into conventional grocers.”

The business now has 12 full time employees –having recently brought on three new positions to lead operations, sales and finance – and operates fully remote, according to Lee.

The investors that immi has brought in through the Series A will also play important roles in scaling the company. Lead investor Touch Capital was co-founded by former JAB Holdings partner Anna-Lena Kamenetzky and Grace Gould, a former member of Index Ventures who has specialized in negotiating celebrity brand partnerships. Lee noted that their varied skill sets, and in particular Kamenetzky’s knowledge of the food and beverage sector, will be vital to guiding immi’s strategy moving forward.

“We knew that as we scaled immi we would need a lot of that manufacturing and operations and finance experience [that Kamenetzky has], frankly, because we’re no longer in the zero to one phase,” Lee said. “We have the product, we have the supply chain setup, now it’s about scaling that.”

Even as immi turns to retail, Chanthasiriphan said they also plan to keep scaling the ecommerce business, which will become a “test bed for new innovation launches.”

“The way we’re setting up our supply chain, we want to make sure that we can test new products very quickly, understand what works well with customers and then discard the bottom performing ones,” Chanthasiriphan said. “Really DTC is the opportunity for us to do limited time offers and really develop a sound understanding of what resonates with customers.”

Other investors in the round included Siddhi Capital, Gold House Ventures, Anti Fund, Harizury and Lab Capital Advisors, as well as other entrepreneurs such as the CEOs and co-founders of Fly By Jing, Bokksu, Boba Guys, and OWYN, among others.

With scaling on top of immi’s priorities list, Lee said it may be some time before the round’s celebrity investors are activated as brand ambassadors. While partners like Osaka and Usher are eager to support the brand – co-branded custom flavors are one item in the pipeline – immi isn’t ready yet to fully turn on the marketing machine. However, he praised the partnerships as being right for the company – in particular, Osaka’s Japanese roots and conscious approach to nutrition align with immi’s mission of celebrating AAPI cultures and creating better-for-you versions of traditional Asian cuisine.

Going ahead, immi is also putting more emphasis on its social responsibility, Lee said. Last year, the company began donating a fixed amount of sales from each quarter to a revolving slate of charities, including organizations to combat hunger, diabetes research, environmental sustainability and support AAPI communities.

“When we started immi, a big mission behind this originally was because our families have chronic health conditions because they didn’t necessarily have the access or even the awareness behind what nutritious foods looked like,” Lee said. “For Kchan and I, it was imperative that we were able to raise this funding to continue that mission to work to make nutrition accessible to more people around the world. And it’s why all the investors we find, we want them to be mission aligned in that regard.”