Kludio, a digital food court in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A round of financing from Steve Vickers, former Chief Economist at Grab Indonesia, and Singapore-based seed-stage VC firm Impiro.
Vickers will also join Kludio’s board, the company said in a statement.
The new funding will be used to scale the business and “introduce over 10 times more food options” for customers on its platform via existing and new partner brands.
Kludio is also currently in the hiring mode.
Established in 2019, Kludio is a multi-brand cloud kitchen that is optimised for sustainable and quick food preparation. What makes it different from other cloud kitchen platforms is that it takes control of the entire production — from cooking and lead generation, to delivery — ultimately taking ownership of the whole customer relationship. It is like an online food court owned entirely by Kludio.
Unlike other food delivery apps, such as Foodpanda, Deliveroo and Grab eats, Kludio provides more flexibility to customers by enabling mix and match of cuisines from multiple brands.
Also Read: Dhaka’s first full-stack digital food court Kludio shines despite COVID-19
What this means is that customers can now combine multiple cuisines or flavours together on a single app, as opposed to being able to order a certain type of cuisine from only one restaurant.
Among the food options available on Kludio is Dough On The Go (a pizza outlet), Fry Box, Chow Box, and Fish & Chips.
The Kludio app
The company claims to have clocked over 20,000 app downloads within just two months of its launch.
“While having a growing team, staying lean is in our DNA. Today, we have a team of over 40 colleagues across several roles. We have grown into the only full-stack operations where we control production, logistics and customer relationship through the app across multiple locations profitably,” Kishwar Hasheeme, co-founder of Kludio, told e27.
Last November, the startup raised US$500,000 in seed round from investors, including Vickers, gojek’s VP of Food Marketplace, Uber’s International Head of Innovation, BOD Tech Ventures, Seedstars, Rashmi Kwatra of Sixteenth Street Capital, and Unilever’s VP Zaved Akhtar.
The on-demand food delivery market in Southeast Asia has been on a growth trajectory for the past few years. According to a joint report by Google Bain & Co. and Temasek, it has jumped 13x in just four years and is forecast to touch US$20 billion in 2025, on par with on-demand transport services.
While the F&B industry is still underdeveloped in Bangladesh, Hasheeme believes that Kludio can close the gap by helping Bangladesh’s F&B businesses to rapidly scale up through Kludio’s value chain, infrastructure, and technology – uniquely designed for the local market.
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Image Credit: Kludio
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