Eat, a Dubai-based restaurant booking platform has closed $3 million in Series A investment with Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP) joining as the latest investor. The startup had raised $2 million as part of the same round in October 2016. The investment from MEVP brings Eat’s total investment raised so far to $3.4 million.
Started from 2014 in Bahrain by Nezar Kadhem, Eat claims to be the largest restaurant reservation platform of the Middle East & North Africa with products for both restaurants and diners. Headquartered in Dubai, Eat has paying customers in over 35 countries that are using its core SaaS platform.
Its restaurant reservation platform through its web and mobile apps serves customers in UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Lebanon and has helped more than 3.5 million of them to date, generating over $250 million worth of orders for the restaurants. The number of restaurants on the platform has increased by over four times in the last one year resulting in 250% increase in monthly revenues.
The startup also has partnerships with TripAdvisor and Google that allows their users to book tables using Eat.
The aim to use the investment to accelerate the growth as well as provide expertise in SaaS, scheduling software and overall technology to restaurants.
“Eat’s goal is to bring best-in-class software to restaurants and diners and become a central point to the multitude of online channels that make up today’s F&B landscape,” said Nezar Kadhem, Founder & CEO at Eat. “This investment gives us additional resources to continue to develop this vision regionally, as well as strategically expand into new global markets.”
Walid Mansour, Partner at MEVP, speaking about the investment, said, “Eat is a true success story out of the Bahraini entrepreneurship ecosystem. We believe Eat is well poised to become the leading provider of tech solutions to F&B players across MENA – beyond its current core markets and beyond table management.”
“We think the Eat team has what it takes to make this happen. In fact, the most recent growth figures are a testament to superb execution capabilities. MEVP will support Eat, building on our experience in SaaS regionally and globally,” he added.
Eat’s main competitor in the region ReserveOut is also well-funded with over $5 million in investment raised so far.
And in case you are wondering, they didn’t copy Uber Eats logo. Either its just one of those crazy coincidences or its Uber who took inspiration from Eat, not the other way around.
