Earlier this year Kitopi teamed up with Bank of America for assistance in the funding round, a source told Reuters. The funding is anticipated to total $150 million to $200 million, which will be used for the company’s Southeast Asia expansion strategy.
SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 has proposed leading the investment in Kitopi with $400 million, the source said, per Reuters.
Kitopi provides a Kitchen as a Service (KaaS) platform that gives eateries a way to open delivery-only locations. Kitopi provides the infrastructure and software and requires little capital and time.
Cloud kitchens are built to prepare food specifically for delivery and don’t have a physical location as a restaurant. The delivery-only services work from a central location via a mobile app. The global cloud kitchen space in India could be worth about $71 billion by 2027. It was worth $43 billion in 2019, according to estimates by Allied Market Research, per Reuters.
Dubai-headquartered Kitopi operates 60-plus kitchens and has more than 1,500 employees. It was co-founded in 2018 by CCO Andres Arenas, CGO Bader Ataya, CEO Mohamad Ballout and CPO Saman Darkan. Kitopi’s latest funding round was a $60 million Series B in 2019.
Kitopi has raised $117.2 million in total from investors including Dubai-based venture capital firm BECO Capital and U.S.-based Lumia Capital, per Reuters.
The startup announced in March that it is seeking to raise $200 million for its expansion efforts across Southeast Asia. The funding could give the privately-held Kitopi an estimated $1 billion valuation.
In an interview with PYMNTS, Noodles & Company CEO Dave Boennighausen told Karen Webster by expanding its digital menu of off-premises-friendly selections, the company saw a 128 percent year-over-year growth in digital sales, comprising 62 percent of total sales.
