We are co-leading a $13.5m (SAR 50.6m) round in Calo, the region's leading direct-to-consumer Foodtech startup. Calo is on a mission to make healthy easy, by making healthy food: better, faster, and cheaper. Based in Bahrain and KSA, the company has helped thousands of people in the region with creating and maintaining healthier lifestyles.
The food market is one of largest regionally and we believe it’s shifting on two fronts: the need for more convenience and healthier options - Calo is providing a solution for both.
Taking a deeper look at KSA for example, the second highest spending bucket for consumers is food and beverages, which according to GASTAT represent ~16% of monthly expenditure. Demand for convenience can be seen by the recent success of multiple businesses in the foodtech space: from delivery startups to cloud kitchens. Moreover, we expect demand for healthier alternatives to rise too, especially when noting around 30% of the GCC population is considered obese and more than 60% have a weight range higher than normal, as mentioned in recent reports.
With the aforementioned data points, and regional governments acting as a forcing function, we estimate the potential addressable market for direct-to-consumer meal plan brands to be $3bn+ in the GCC. To that end, we are excited to partner with Calo: the regional champion in the space.
When we met with Ahmed and Moayed, we were not only impressed by their product and commercial expertise; but their obsession with providing a delightful customer experience. Calo is vertically integrated and technology first; giving them a unique ability to regularly improve the end-to-end customer experience. Calo’s users are able to seamlessly sign up on the app by inputting their biometric information (like age, weight, height, etc.) after which they can select meals from a large variety of options available on their menu. The company then sends them a delivery that has their personalized meals which they can heat up and enjoy in 2 minutes.
We believe this is just the start for the space and we are happy to partner with the Calo team in making health easy in our region. Calo is available in Bahrain and currently soft launched in Riyadh, with thousands on their waitlist. If you would like to try them out you can sign up here.