Foodtech raises funds to expand corporate offerings

FOOD delivery unit Smartbite has raised over RM418,000 via a successful equity crowdfunding campaign, bringing its total investment amount to over Rm2.93mil.

The company says the investment will be used to expand its corporate offerings in catering and employee benefit programmes.

Smartbite helps companies manage their F&B requirements for events, meetings and other corporate activities through its technology platform.

“With our success in growing our user base among the working crowd in Kuala Lumpur as well as the feedback and data we have gathered, we identified a gap in the market when it came to corporate solutions for food.

“We are increasing the bulk of our logistics from delivering meals of 20 pax to almost 1,000 pax on a single trip. Not only does it provide stable sales for our restaurant partners, but this expansion of corporate offerings also provides a one-stop solution for companies and their employees to get great food delivered affordably and conveniently right to their office,” says Smartbite chief executive officer and co-founder Gabriele Fadda.

Previously, Smartbite has raised around US$300,000 (Rm1.3mil) from two series of funding and has received a strategic investment from Marna Capital, Rhombus Food Holdings, the founder of Hop Lun, Eric Ryd, Noodles Digital as well as angel investors from Asia and Europe.

Smartbite says by leveraging its existing technology, it can help manage large corporate food orders and help its partner F&B outlets scale up to serve offices in the Central Business District area.

The company will also be working with human resource departments in various offices to offer a daily allowance on the platform as part of their employee benefit programmes.

According to Fadda, food is one of the top perks that corporate employees value. As such, offering a daily allowance on a platform such as Smartbite can be an inexpensive way to provide employee benefits to keep them engaged at work.

“Since the inception of Smartbite, we grew to better understand both the psychology of a corporate employee in the business districts as well as unit economics of food delivery. These lessons learned have definitely helped us fine-tune our business model and we are now achieving a daily average gross profit margin of 15% to 20%.

“By leveraging on technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, Smartbite is dedicated to simplifying how working professionals eat and helping them save time and money,” he says.

Unlike the commonly used model of on-demand and point-topoint food delivery, Smartbite delivers a curated list of meals on a fixed time-slot. This allows delivery personnel to deliver bulk orders according to office buildings.

As meals are delivered on a fixed time-slot, restaurant partners would be able to prepare these forecasted meals in advance, thereby eliminating unpredictability in inventory management and increasing productivity during offpeak hours.

Smartbite is expected to experience 70%-100% growth this year.