Anchr has secured $5.8 million in pre-seed funding to automate the back office of the U.S. food distribution industry, which still relies heavily on manual processes such as phone calls and spreadsheets.
Typically, a mid-size food distributor’s operations team spends hours logging orders from restaurant clients, received through various means like email, text, voicemail, and fax, into an outdated ERP system. They also manage late payments, reorder supplies based on intuition, and answer customer inquiries about deliveries. This industry serves millions and handles billions of dollars in products, yet much of it still depends on manual work.
Anchr, a New York-based startup founded in 2025, aims to change that with AI agents. With $5.8 million in pre-seed funding, the company intends to create the first comprehensive AI operating system for independent food distributors, automating tasks like order processing, procurement, inventory management, customer support, and invoicing. Anchr emerged from Andreessen Horowitz’s Speedrun accelerator program.
The funding round was led by a16z and included contributions from Offline Ventures, Long Journey Ventures, Anterra Capital (a venture fund specializing in food and agriculture), and strategic angel investors with experience at OpenAI and other AI companies.
Anchr is led by two co-CEOs. Smayan Mehra, who studied computer science and engineering at Duke, previously worked at Apple on vision models and at LiveRamp building AI products. Tzar Taraporvala studied mathematics and philosophy at Columbia and worked at McKinsey, leading AI transformation projects in large legacy companies, including one of the largest AI deployments in food services. The founders bring complementary expertise: Mehra with deep technical knowledge in machine learning, and Taraporvala with consulting experience in implementing AI in large organizations.
The problem Anchr addresses is structural. Independent food distributors, which supply various establishments outside the reach of major players like Sysco and US Foods, hold a significant share of the trillion-dollar North American market. However, the technology they use is outdated. Most distributors rely on ERPs designed for manufacturing, supplemented by spreadsheets and email, with knowledge often tied to experienced employees who eventually retire.
Anchr doesn’t aim to replace existing ERPs, as its website states: “no rip-and-replace.” Instead, it integrates with current systems such as Aptean, Oracle NetSuite, QuickBooks, HubSpot, and Blue Yonder, and adds AI agents to enhance them.
These agents perform tasks consuming employees’ time: processing and reconciling orders from diverse channels, creating supplier purchase orders using live inventory data, identifying risky customer accounts, and suggesting upsell opportunities via order history and menu analysis.
The company claims its platform can halve order-processing time and reduce errors to nearly zero. According to its website, one customer noted over 40 hours a week were spent manually logging orders before Anchr, while another highlighted a shift from reactive to proactive procurement planning.
Investors are drawn to the food distribution sector not only for its size but also for its fragmentation. While dominated by a few national leaders, numerous independent operators exist who lack the technology budget or internal capacity to develop custom solutions. This presents an opportunity for vertical AI software to gain a solid foothold before larger companies take notice.
The $5.8 million will be used to expand Anchr’s sales team, enhance integrations with customers’ existing ERP systems, and scale the AI agents. For a sector still using voicemails for orders, this is a modest round. Its success hinges on how quickly food distributors decide to embrace change.