OakNorth has supported TriSpan’s investment in leading Indian casual dining group, Mowgli Street Food.
The capital from OakNorth Bank will be used to accelerate Mowgli’s exciting plans as it continues to expand across the UK. Additionally, it will enable Foresight Group to exit the business, following its investment in 2017, with TriSpan coming in as new investors alongside Nisha Katona and the management team. Trispan’s Rising Stars Fund is a dedicated restaurant private equity program which has invested in 10 restaurant companies in the US and the UK including: Pho Café and Rosa’s Thai.
About Mowgli Street Food: Following two decades working as a full-time barrister, Nisha Katona MBE, launched the first Mowgli Street Food in Liverpool in 2014, with an ambition to build an eatery serving the kind of food Indians eat at home and on their streets. Now a successful chef and food writer, Katona has scaled the chain to over 630 employees, across 15 sites. These are in several of the UK’s major cities, including London, Birmingham, and Manchester, with a further three sites confirmed to open this year, in Bristol, Edinburgh, and Brighton. Its distinctive offering focuses on providing fresh, healthy, and flavourful Indian dishes in unique tiffin boxes. The “home from home” interior of each restaurant with swing seats, decorative trees, and twinkling lights makes them an Instagram favourite with over 119k followers on the platform. In 2018, Mowgli appeared in The Sunday Times’ Fast Track 100, which features the UK’s fastest-growing companies, and in 2019, Katona was recognised with an MBE for services to the food industry.