Startups
Auto Added by WPeMatico
While eyeing a SPAC, Swedish autonomous EV company Einride nears $75 million in new funding
Swedish autonomous electric vehicle startup Einride is aiming to continue the momentum sparked by partnerships with Oatly and Lidl by seeking additional capital, TechCrunch has learned.
Einride is seeking $75 million in new financing, while at the same time exploring the potential for a public listing through a special purpose acquisition company, according to people with knowledge of the company’s plans.
SPACs, a mechanism in which a publicly traded shell company merges with a private business, have taken the U.S. capital markets by storm led, in part, by startups focused on the electrification of mobility.
Early successes of public listings for companies like Nikola (despite its dubious claims) helped set the stage for the SPAC boom. Canoo, Fisker Inc, ChargePoint and Lordstown Motors are just a few of the U.S.-based EV companies that have gone public via a SPAC in the past year.
Unlike some newly minted SPAC companies, Einride has some fundamentals. The company has already piloted its technology through a partnership with Oatly, the Swedish oat milk maker.
Oatly began using Einride’s electric trucks on its delivery routes from each of its Swedish production sites in October 2020. Thus far, the trucks have driven over 8,600 km electric and as a result have saved over 10,500 kg of CO2 compared to diesel, according to a statement from the companies.
“Sustainability is at the core of everything we do, and we work hard to lower our emissions across the board. This includes our emissions for transports, which is why we are now shifting to electrical vehicles, which reduces our climate footprint by 87% on these routes,” said Simon Broadbent, supply chain director at Oatly, in a statement at the time.
The deal with Oatly was just the beginning. As the ink dried on that partnership, Einride quickly signed other marquee Swedish businesses including the food shipping and logistics company Lidl and the electronics manufacturer Electrolux.
Big automakers have electric and autonomous plans of their own. Argo, a developer of self-driving technology, is now worth $7.5 billion thanks to an investment from Ford and the VW Group. And VW’s Traton Group is pushing low emission and electrification through a $2.2 billion investment announced in 2019.
Daimler, Paccar, and Volvo all have plans as well.
That’s just scratching the surface of the money that’s pouring in to autonomous, electrified transport. Of course, Tesla is in the game with its own semi truck and, in China, Plus AI, is automating a number of vehicles from Manbang, Suning and FAW Jiefang.
All of this money is aiming to capture a portion of the market for autonomous, electrified vehicles that the consulting firm McKinsey estimated would save the trucking industry over $100 billion. It’s a potentially huge opportunity in the $260 billion U.S. trucking market alone. Worldwide, businesses spend about $1.2 trillion on trucking, according to McKinsey.
The benefits that would accrue to the industry are more than just financial. Trucking is a huge component of the greenhouse gas emissions that come from the transportation sector — which includes road, rail, air and marine transportation. In 2016, trucking and transport broadly contributed to roughly 24% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions — and that number has been steadily increasing.
Any reduction in carbon emissions from the transport sector would be a huge step forward on the path toward a more environmentally sustainable future.
No wonder venture investors are falling all over each other to invest in these companies. Einride counts EQT Ventures and NordicNinja VC, a fund backed by Panasonic, Honda, Omron and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, among its investors. Along with backing from Ericsson Ventures, Norrsken Foundation, Plum Alley Investments and Plug and Play Ventures the startup has raised $32 million to date.
Powered by WPeMatico
Vendr raises huge $60M Series A as its SaaS-purchasing service scales
This morning Vendr announced a $60 million Series A round, a huge funding event led by Tiger Global, with participation from Y Combinator, Sound Ventures, Craft Ventures, F-Prime Capital and Garage Capital.
The outsized Series A comes after Vendr last raised $4 million in a mid-2020 seed round, with TechCrunch reporting that the company was profitable at the time. Vendr had raised just over $6 million total before this latest round.
TechCrunch had a few questions. First, how the company had managed to attract so much capital so quickly. According to an interview with Vendr CEO Ryan Neu, his startup grew just under 5x in 2020, and was cash flow-positive last year as well. The startup’s model of standing between SaaS buyers and sellers, speeding up transactions while lowering their cost, appears to have fit well into 2020’s twin trends of rising software reliance and a focus on cost control.
Second, how did the company manage to grow so much? Vendr charges its customers between 1% and 5% of their software spend that it manages, which can add up. Neu told TechCrunch that a somewhat standard 500-person company might spend $2 million to $3.5 million on software each year, which by our math would make that company worth no less than $20,000 to $35,000 in revenue for Vendr at 1% of spend. At Vendr’s midpoint 2.5%, those figures rise $50,000 to $87,500.
At those prices, Vendr can stack up annual revenue pretty quickly. But why would Vendr customers pay it to handle their software spend? Savings, effectively. So long as they save more than Vendr charges, they are coming out ahead. And as the startup claims that it can cut the time to buying, its own customers can reduce time spent on securing tooling.
Everyone wins, it seems, except for software sellers. After all, they are the ones losing a chance to get less-sophisticated buyers to pay more for their code, right? Neu said that his company’s model isn’t too bad for selling companies as they close deals much more quickly, at a higher rate of closure. That could save their sales team time, which might help balance the price differential.
Pressed on what Vendr might be able to do for the selling side of the software market given its present-day buyer focus, Neu declined to share any possible plans.
Returning to the round, why did Vendr raise the money at all if it was doing just fine sans new external funding? The company told TechCrunch that it has scaled its staff to 60 from 10 a year ago, and that it wanted a stronger balance sheet. That’s fine. We’d be hard-pressed to find the startup that wouldn’t take such a large check from Tiger, given the valuation gain the raise implies for Vendr, so there isn’t too much mystery to unpack.
A theme that TechCrunch has explored in recent weeks has been the huge depth of the software market. Given the TAM for bits and bytes, Vendr may be able to keep up the hypergrowth that its new round implies its investors will expect. Let’s see how 2021 winds up for the company.
Early Stage is the premier “how-to” event for startup entrepreneurs and investors. You’ll hear firsthand how some of the most successful founders and VCs build their businesses, raise money and manage their portfolios. We’ll cover every aspect of company building: Fundraising, recruiting, sales, product-market fit, PR, marketing and brand building. Each session also has audience participation built-in — there’s ample time included for audience questions and discussion.
Powered by WPeMatico
Olo’s IPO could value the company north of $3B as Toast waits in the wings
Olo, the New York-based fintech startup that provides order processing software to restaurants, shared its initial IPO price range this morning. The company’s debut comes ahead of the expected IPO of Toast, a Boston-based unicorn with a similar market remit.
Targeting $16 to $18 per share, Olo could raise as much as $372.6 million in its public offering.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.
Unlike most companies going public in recent quarters that we’ve tracked, Olo has a history of growth and profitability, making its impending pricing all the more interesting. It’s unknown if Toast is profitable, but because most venture-backed IPOs aren’t, we’re presuming it isn’t.
This morning, we’re doing our usual work: parsing the company’s pricing interval to get a valuation range for Olo. We’ll calculate both simple and fully diluted pricing and then do some quick work on its revenue scale to come to grips with its total scale.
Are investors willing to pay more for profits? And, if so, how much? This is a niche question because most IPOs look a bit more like Coursera than Olo, but it’s still worth answering.
Olo’s IPO valuation range
If you’d like to follow along, you can read the new S-1 filing here. Our first look at Olo is here, and its fundraising history is here, per Crunchbase.
The company is targeting $16 to $18 per share with an expected sale of 18 million shares. The company is also reserving 2.7 million shares for its underwriters. At the upper end of its range, not counting shares reserved for its bankers, Olo could raise $324 million in its debut.
Per the company, its total number of Class A and B shares outstanding after its IPO would come to 142,012,926, or what we calculate to be 144,712,926 shares, including its underwriters’ option. Using the latter — because we tend to look for valuation extremes — Olo would be worth $2.32 billion to $2.6 billion.
But what about its fully diluted valuation? Adding in shares that are currently tied to unexercised but vested stock options bring Olo to around 188,085,714 shares. Add in the underwriters’ option and the total rises to 190,785,714 shares.
Using the latter figure, at $16 and $18 per share Olo could be worth $3.05 billion to $3.43 billion on a fully diluted basis.
Is that expensive?
Let’s find out! Digging back into Olo’s growth, we can see a business with rapidly expanding software incomes. And the same software revenues are improving in quality over time. From 2019 to 2020, for example, Olo’s “platform” revenues — a mix of subscription and transaction top line from software — grew from $45.1 million to $92.8 million. Over the same time, the company’s platform revenue saw its gross margin improve from 73.6% to 84.5%.
Powered by WPeMatico
Celebs like Rob Dyrdek, Joe Jonas and Travis Barker are backing the nootropic nosh company, Mindright
It was only a matter of time before someone married the nascent nootropic supplements for brain health to the snack bar craze that continues to attract dollars and exits.
That time is apparently now, as Rob Dyrdek, the MTV-famous celebrity, pro-skater and entrepreneur, and Chris Bernard announce a new investment in the company they co-founded, Mindright, alongside celebrity investors including Joe Jonas, Travis Barker and The Profit’s Marcus Lemonis.
“When we started down the path of condition-specific food and beverage… we started doing a lot of research into the nootropics and adaptogens space,” said co-founder Bernard. Working with a food scientist who did not want to be named (which isn’t sketchy at all), Dyrdek and Bernard were introduced to several companies producing ashwagandha, which the two had settled on as the new key ingredient in their snack bars.
Along with ginseng and cordyceps mushrooms, the company has a trifecta of new (and old) supplements that have taken the nutraceutical world by storm.
Bernard had initially approached the Dyrdek Machine group about another product, but the company was too far along and not something that Dyrdek felt passionate about backing. The story changed when Bernard returned with plans for this nootropic nosh.
“[Bernard] brought back the concept of the path of what’s evolved from functional foods and probiotics and collagen and sort of the mental health and adaptogen and the supplement world and said here’s how to merge these,” Dyrdek said of Bernard’s second pitch. “It was a home-run for us. Our process is supporting a solopreneur where we help shape and build the company together and provide the outsourced resources. We fund the development of the idea to go to the capital markets.”
So far, Dyrdek and his team have made 15 investments in consumer and entertainment businesses, and five of those business have since been acquired.
Most deals from Dyrdek Machine follow a similar trajectory. The firm becomes a co-founder and shares common stock and then negotiate a preferred equity investment for the capital infusion. Typically those deals range from $250,000 to $500,000.
“We co-found it and we share that common share class and our first money is preferred and pick a valuation that balances out the deal,” Dyrdek said. “How much equity do we want to develop it with you is what we negotiate with that initial capital.”
Portrait of Rob Dyrdek, founder of Dyrdek Machine. Image Credits: Dyrdek Machine
Dyrdek describes his investment firm as founder-driven and market agnostic. “We want a well-rounded, multi-dimensional founder and then we look at the market and how do we evolve it into something that has a larger, broader appeal,” Dyrdek said. “Rather than chasing down nootropics, we found that ‘good mood’ was the important thing to the consumer base. That’s why we drove ‘Good mood superfood.’ ”
Bernard’s faith in Dyrdek’s ability to move the business forward has been proven in the evolution of other companies in the firm’s portfolio. Dyrdek pointed to Outstanding Foods, another investment, which he said had recently closed a $10 million round at a $100 million valuation. Another startup in the portfolio, Momentous, a supplement manufacturer, also closed on a big round recently after raising $5 million in 2019, Dyrdek said.
For Mindright, Dyrdek’s involvement brought in other celebrity names once they tried the product. The company counts Joe Jonas and Travis Barker among its seed investors.
“They were excited to get involved in this because they believed in what we took the time to create,” Bernard said.
Powered by WPeMatico
Attend TechCrunch’s free virtual Miami meetup on March 11
TechCrunch is hosting a small virtual meetup this Thursday centered around Miami. We hope you can attend. It’s free.
This is our first (virtual) field trip to Miami. Even though we can’t be there physically right now, it’ll sure feel like we are. All lights will be shining on the Magic City. The area is quickly transforming thanks to active investors, interesting companies, a Twitter-proficient mayor and beautifully scenic living.
If you’re interested in what’s happening in Miami in general, seeking out a new, up-and-coming city to live in, looking for cool companies and talented founders to invest in, then you’ll want to register and drop March 11 on your calendar. This is a virtual event, but space is still limited, so register early.
Here’s just some of what you can expect:
- Networking – It’s what you can always count on us for. Companies are started and deals get done at TechCrunch events (yes, even the virtual ones!).
- Pitch-off – We’re going to tap into the local tech scene in Miami and bring on some VCs to take a look at your pitches. They’ll give you feedback live from the stage. Sign up to pitch by filling out this form.
- Panels – Meet the movers and shakers up close and personal. Hear about their journey, ask them questions and find out what’s special to them about Miami.
All along the way we’ll be asking for your feedback by way of polls, Q&As and surveys. We want to hear from everyone who lives in the birthplace of sunscreen, and we’re looking to you for suggestions on folks who should be getting all of the attention we can throw at them on March 11. Drop suggestions in the comments below.
It’s going to be one to remember, and it’s the perfect setup for when we can safely crash the city in person again!
Powered by WPeMatico
Equity Monday: More money for fintech, Deliveroo’s IPO and AI startups
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and make sure to check out our Friday show that featured the Square-Tidal deal, some recent IPOs and some super-neat rounds.
Much like today’s show, if I am being honest. Here’s the rundown:
- Coursera filed to go public, which could help set the tone for edtech founders and startups regarding their own valuations and fundraising prospects.
- Bay Area startups did not leave.
- And the world of AI venture-capital funding shows that while there’s plenty of capital, the number of startups being founded in the space is dipping.
- Starling raised a huge new round in the fintech space, and Deliveroo dropped some financial numbers on its path to going public in short-order.
- Postscript raised $35 million for its Shopify-SMS service; Praava Health raised $10.6 million to bring better healthcare to Bangladesh.
A packed kickoff to what promises to be a packed week!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 AM PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!
Powered by WPeMatico
PayPal to acquire cryptocurrency security startup Curv
PayPal has announced that it plans to acquire Curv, a cryptocurrency startup based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Israeli newspaper Calcalist originally reported the move. And PayPal has now made an official announcement.
Curv is a cryptocurrency security company that helps you store your crypto assets securely. The company operates a cloud-based service that lets you access your crypto wallets without any hardware device.
Curv also lets you set up sophisticated policies so that the new intern cannot withdraw crypto assets without some sort of approval chain. Similarly, you can create allow lists so that regular transactions can go through more easily.
Behind the scenes, Curv uses multi-party computation to handle private keys. When you create a wallet, cryptographic secrets are generated on your device and on Curv’s servers. Whenever you’re trying to initiate a transaction, multiple secrets are used to generate a full public and private key.
Secrets are rotated regularly and you can’t do anything with just one secret. If somebody steals an unsecured laptop, a hacker cannot access crypto funds with the information stored on this device alone.
As you can see, Curv isn’t a cryptocurrency wallet for end users. The company offers its services to exchanges, brokers and over-the-counter desks. If you’re running a fund and you plan on buying a large amount of cryptocurrencies, you could also consider using Curv.
Finally, financial institutions that are looking for a solution to store digital assets and diversify their balance sheet could also work with Curv.
PayPal says that the Curv team will join the cryptocurrency group within PayPal. The payment giant has been gradually rolling out cryptocurrency products. It has partnered with Paxos so that users in the U.S. can buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies from their PayPal account.
In the near future, PayPal also plans to let you buy and sell items using cryptocurrencies. During its most recent earnings release, the company also said that it plans to launch cryptocurrency products in other countries and in Venmo, the consumer fintech super app owned by PayPal.
Terms of the deal are undisclosed and the transaction should close at some point during the first half of 2021. Calcalist reported that PayPal was paying between $200 million and $300 million for the acquisition. A person close to the company says that the transaction was under $200 million. I guess we’ll find out what happened exactly in the next earnings release.
Early Stage is the premier “how-to” event for startup entrepreneurs and investors. You’ll hear firsthand how some of the most successful founders and VCs build their businesses, raise money and manage their portfolios. We’ll cover every aspect of company building: Fundraising, recruiting, sales, product-market fit, PR, marketing and brand building. Each session also has audience participation built-in — there’s ample time included for audience questions and discussion.
Powered by WPeMatico
Last-mile delivery robotics company Refraction AI raises $4.2M
Ann Arbor-based Refraction AI announced today that it has raised a $4.2 million seed round. The startup, which debuted on the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility stage back in 2019, was founded by a pair of University of Michigan professors (Matthew Johnson-Roberson — now CTO — and Ram Vasudevan) seeking to solve a number of issues posed by many delivery robots.
With an initial prototype built on a bicycle foundation, the company’s REV-1 robot is designed to operate in bike lanes and roads, rather than the standard sidewalk ‘bot. The different approach allows the robot to travel at higher speeds (topping out at 15 miles per hour) and removes some of the messy pedestrian-dodging issues that come with sidewalk use (while introducing some new ones on that narrow sliver of asphalt shared by cyclists).
Refraction is currently testing a small fleet in its native Ann Arbor. The seed round, led by Pillar VC, will be used for R&D, expanding the company’s reach and recruiting more customers, with a focus on grocery store and restaurant deliveries. Other investors include, eLab Ventures, Osage Venture Partners, Trucks Venture Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, Chad Laurans and Invest Michigan.
Another key differentiator is the use of cameras, versus LIDAR. The decision comes with some technological trade-offs, but benefits include a lower price point and the ability for the company to more quickly scale its fleet. The technology is also not easily districted by weather conditions encountered in the upper midwest, though it has limitations, too. As the company puts it, if you’re not comfortable walking out in it, the robot probably won’t be, either.
“Our platform uses technology that exists today in an innovative way, to get people the things they need, when they need them, where they live,” CEO Luke Schneider said in a release tied to the news. “And we’re doing so in a way that reduces business’ costs, makes roads less congested, and eliminates carbon emissions.”
With this new funding, the company plans to expand operations beyond its native Ann Arbor, though no additional test markets have been announced.
Early Stage is the premier ‘how-to’ event for startup entrepreneurs and investors. You’ll hear first-hand how some of the most successful founders and VCs build their businesses, raise money and manage their portfolios. We’ll cover every aspect of company-building: Fundraising, recruiting, sales, product market fit, PR, marketing and brand building. Each session also has audience participation built-in – there’s ample time included for audience questions and discussion.
Powered by WPeMatico
New clinical trial data from Locus Biosciences shows promise in CRISPR-Cas3 technology
Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest potential threats to global health today. But Locus Biosciences is hoping that their crPhage technology might provide a new solution.
Based in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, the startup recently announced promising phase 1b clinical trial results for their use of CRISPR-Cas3-enhanced bacteriophages as a treatment for urinary tract infections caused by escherichia coli. Led in part by former Patheon executive and current Locus CEO Paul Garofolo, the startup launched in 2015 with the goal of using a less popular application of CRISPR technology to address growing antimicrobial resistance.
CRISPR-Cas3 technology has notably different mechanisms from its more well-known CRISPR-Cas9 counterpart. Where the Cas9 enzyme has the ability to cleanly cut through a piece of DNA like a pair of scissors, Garofolo describes Cas3 more like a Pac-Man, shredding the DNA as it moves along a strand.
“You wouldn’t be able to use it for most of the editing platforms people were after,” he said, noting that meant there wouldn’t be as much competition around Cas3. “So I knew it would be protected for some time, and that we could keep it quiet.”
Garofolo and his team wanted to use CRISPR-Cas3 not to edit harmful bacteria found in the body, but to destroy it. To do this, they took the DNA-shredding mechanism of Cas3 and used it to enhance bacteriophages — viruses that can attack and kill different species of bacteria. Together, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Dave Ousterout — who has a PhD in biomedical engineering from Duke — thinks this technology offers an extremely direct and targeted way of killing bacteria.
“We armed the phages with this Cas3 system that attacks E. coli, and that sort of dual mechanism of action is what comes together, essentially, as a really potent way to remove just E. coli,” he said in an interview.
That specificity is something that antibiotics lack. Rather than targeting only harmful bacteria in the body, antibiotics typically wipe out all bacteria they come across. “Every time we take antibiotics, we’re not thinking about all the other parts of us that are impacted by the bacteria that do good things,” said Garofolo. But the precision of Locus Biosciences’ crPhage technology means that only the targeted bacteria would be wiped out, leaving those necessary to the body’s normal function intact.
Beyond offering this more specific approach to treatment of pathogens, or any bacteria-based disease, Garofolo and his team also suspect that their approach will also be extremely safe. Though deadly to bacteria, bacteriophages are typically harmless to humans. The safety of CRISPR in humans is well-established, too.
“That’s our secret sauce,” said Garofolo. “We can build drugs that are more powerful than the antibiotics they’re trying to replace, and they use phage, which is probably one of the world’s safest ways to deliver something into the human body.”
While this new technology could certainly help treat pathogens and infectious diseases, Garofolo hopes that indications in immunology, oncology and neurology might benefit from it too. “We’re starting to figure out that some bacteria might promote cancer, or inflammation in your gut,” he said. If researchers can identify the bacteria at the root cause of those conditions, Garofolo and Ousterout think the crPhage technology might prove to be an effective treatment.
“If we’re right about that, it’s not just about infections or antimicrobial resistance, but helping people overcome cancer or delay the onset of dementia,” Garofolo said. “It’s changing the way we think about how bacteria really help us live.”
Early Stage is the premier “how-to” event for startup entrepreneurs and investors. You’ll hear firsthand how some of the most successful founders and VCs build their businesses, raise money and manage their portfolios. We’ll cover every aspect of company building: Fundraising, recruiting, sales, product-market fit, PR, marketing and brand building. Each session also has audience participation built-in — there’s ample time included for audience questions and discussion.
Powered by WPeMatico
Egypt’s customer engagement platform for F&B brands in MENA, Koinz, raises $4.8M seed
As the restaurant industry across different cities was massively hit by the pandemic-induced lockdowns last year, food aggregator platforms helped by driving online customers to them.
Koinz is one such startup in Egypt. Its value for food and beverages brands before, during and after the lockdowns has bagged the startup a $4.8 million seed round.
Founded in 2018 by Hussein Momtaz, Ahmed Said and Abdullah Al Khaldi, Koinz set out to solve two major problems in Egypt’s food aggregation industry.
The offline and online food and restaurant experience in the country are totally separate. Most food aggregators who deal with delivery tend to focus on the online customer, and there’s no sophisticated experience for the offline customer.
Next, the unit economics of the food aggregation industry is quite challenging. According to Momtaz, the startup’s CEO, the food aggregation industry usually takes about 25%-30% average commission from F&B players for business to start to make sense.
“This is not because they want to squeeze money from the hands of restaurants or brands,” Momtaz told TechCrunch. “But the cost of acquiring customers and retaining them for the food aggregator itself is very high; that’s why they need very high commissions from the brands or restaurants.”
This is where Koinz comes in. The company developed a mobile app for takeout and delivery orders that manages offline customer experiences while delivering an engagement platform to manage loyalty programs, customer feedback and analytics about the online and offline customer base.
Abdullah Al Khaldi (CRO), Hussein Momtaz (CEO), and Ahmed Said (CTO). Image Credits: Koinz
Online food experience for Koinz customers is like a treasure hunt, and Momtaz claims the company’s business model has cracked the industry’s unit economics. This, alongside providing brands with insights, differentiates the platform from other aggregators and makes its customer acquisition cost and retention cost 60% less than most of them.
Here’s how the platform works. When customers visit a brand using for the first time, they enter their phone numbers to instantly receive points for their order via text message. After various restaurant visits and making orders, they accumulate enough points. They’ll need to download the Koinz mobile application to redeem them, thereby converting these offline customers to online ones.
Furthermore, these offline customers can now discover new places to eat, read and leave reviews, and order delivery or takeout.
“None of the small or big brands in the region had something like this before. The offline customer is like a ghost. He walks into the brands, takes his orders and leaves without the brands knowing anything about him. Koinz is changing that,” the CEO remarked.
Building its platform this way, Koinz tries to be different from other online aggregators that erode restaurant owners’ profit margins while delivering limited customer access and interaction. How? By collecting real-time data and leveraging a digital rewarding system designed to drive customers to deepen their relationship with restaurants.
Image Credits: Koinz
Brands can configure their gifts lists and determine for which items customers can redeem their points. For instance, customers in an Egyptian restaurant called Buffalo Burger can exchange 68 points for a Diablo Fries Medium; or wait till they get to 160 points to get a Mozzarella Sticks Medium; or 236 points for a Double Diggler.
Similarly, every brand has its own configuration. A customer cannot get points in Buffalo Burger and redeem them at Hamburgini. Koinz charges subscriptions to the brands for its engagement and feedback platform and collects commission whenever an order is made via its platform, which varies across its markets.
Because of its original business model, Koinz had to iterate several times. Before using phone numbers to collect customers’ information, the company used QR codes and NFC tags. Momtaz says this was highly ineffective, and the move to phone numbers helped skyrocket its growth and value.
The six-man team back in 2018 is now 80, and the platform, which is basically powering the growth of restaurants in the Middle East, claims to have had up to 4 million consumers earn points on its platform. These consumers have redeemed almost 300,000 rewards, while almost 800,000 customers have left reviews.
Since launching in Egypt, Koinz has expanded to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Like Egypt, these markets have similar dynamics and demographics. They have also witnessed one of the highest rates of new or increased users in online deliveries — restaurant products and groceries — during the pandemic.
Besides, consumers in the Middle East are outpacing the global appetite in food delivery, with 64% ordering in at least once a week compared to 40% made by global consumers. And with the fast-food industry in MENA estimated at nearly $31 billion in 2020 and expected to reach nearly $60 billion by 2025, there’s so much room for Koinz to grow in the region. Momtaz says the company is also considering a move to Sub-Saharan Africa in the near future despite them having distinct demographics.
Entrepreneur and investor Justin Mateen led this seed round. Since leaving Tinder in 2014, Mateen has been an active investor in early-stage companies. Koinz is his first investment in the MENA region. According to him, Koinz’s ability to allow food and beverages brands to understand their customers’ needs and simultaneously increase their profit margins was one of the reasons he invested in the Egyptian-based startup.
“The company’s unique business model will continue to scale as the food delivery space evolves. Hussein’s drive and excitement for what the team is building are what convinced me to lead a round in the Middle East for the first time,” Mateen added.
African-focused VC 4DX Ventures and strategic angel investors from Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia participated as well.
Peter Orth, co-founder and managing director of the firm, said of the investment that with restaurants in the region suffering under the traditional aggregator model, especially during the pandemic, Koinz has quickly become a win-win for both consumers and restaurant owners across the Middle East.
As the three-year-old company plans to use the capital to hire more talent and fuel its expansion across the Middle East, Mateen and Orth will join its board of directors.
Early Stage is the premier “how-to” event for startup entrepreneurs and investors. You’ll hear firsthand how some of the most successful founders and VCs build their businesses, raise money and manage their portfolios. We’ll cover every aspect of company building: Fundraising, recruiting, sales, product-market fit, PR, marketing and brand building. Each session also has audience participation built-in — there’s ample time included for audience questions and discussion.
Powered by WPeMatico