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Saudi Arabia-based start-up Blink, which helps reduce restaurants' dependence on delivery aggregators, has raised $2.1 million to accelerate its growth in the kingdom.
The seed funding round drew capital from 500 Global and Global Founders Capital, alongside existing investors, including Orbit Startup/SOSV, the company said in a statement on Friday.
"The current funding round will enable the company to accelerate [its] growth in Saudi Arabia, the fastest-growing market in the GCC region, where [it has] already established an impressive footprint," the statement said.
Blink's software services seek to help reduce restaurants' dependence on order aggregators and make higher profits by growing their direct online ordering channels.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, food delivery aggregators, which take up a portion of restaurants' profit margins of around 20%, has processed the majority of customer orders.
"Restaurants today are struggling with dependence on food delivery aggregators more than ever. Post-COVID-19, due to a sharp rise in the habit of delivery, more than 90% of orders are coming through aggregators, where restaurants lose on average a 20% margin," said Syed Sair Ali, Co-founder and CEO of Blink.
Over the last two months, the start-up has helped restaurants process 4.5 million orders and surpassed $0.5 million in annual recurring revenue.
Since its inception in 2020, the total number of direct orders the start-up has processed has reached more than 8 million for over 1,200 restaurants across the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan.
(Writing by Cleofe Maceda; editing by Seban Scaria)
