Dubai-based tech innovation company Grubtech raises $ 13 m and expands operations in Lanka

Co-Founder/CEO Mohamed Al Fayed and General Manager for Sri Lanka Rushanthi Seneviratne

Grubtech, the UAE-based tech innovator and disruptor who has become a leader in the cloud kitchen space, is aggressively expanding its offices in Sri Lanka, bringing endless possibilities to digitally transform Food & Beverage (F&B) businesses and in offering many job opportunities to talented software engineers across the country. 

In just two years, Grubtech having already stamped its presence in over 15 countries worldwide, including in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa, has successfully raised a $13 Million Series A investment recently led by Addition. Other investors in this round include BY Ventures and Hambro Perks Oryx Fund. With this, Grubtech is now looking at expanding their engineering capabilities to other countries amongst which Sri Lanka is a key destination of choice.

Grubtech’s story began in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many restaurants, cloud kitchens, and other businesses across the board had to contend with previously unfathomable conditions, with many shutting down or pausing operations. As demand for online food delivery increased by leaps and bounds almost overnight, Grubtech’s, plug and play end-to-end operating system for restaurants and cloud kitchens adapted to the situation through its all-in-one, easy-to-use technology stack, and presented a solution to power the next generation of cloud kitchens and restaurants, helping them be “creators, not administrators”. 

This easily deployable software enables a 25% reduction in time from when an order is placed until it is delivered, and a 35% increase in margins by maximising efficiency of fixed costs and wastage. Additionally, operators can build on data received through their smart locker system to refine internal processes.

These innovations led Grubtech to secure the prestigious ‘Foodtech Startup of the Year’ award by the Entrepreneur Magazine. 

Co-Founder/CEO Mohamed Al Fayed explained, “One of our key successes is that we were late to come to the market, so we are the latest kids on the block to tackle this problem. We built Grubtech from the ground up to address modern friction points and challenges rather than utilising existing legacy technology and making them conform to today’s digital journey. We also spared no expense in leveraging the latest architectural principles, such as microservices, using the latest tooling to build a bleeding-edge stack for our clients. We were also the first to introduce microcloud kitchen technology, empowering restaurants to effortlessly serve multiple brands from a single location, while enabling cloud kitchens to automate the entire order journey and control all their operations.”

In Sri Lanka, the platform is not all Grubtech is offering. General Manager for Sri Lanka Rushanthi Seneviratne said: “The technology was 99% built in Sri Lanka and is being used by over 400 brands around the world. This is a matter of national pride. So, we’re looking for digital and engineering talent here, where it all began. We are an agile startup. We are all about the latest innovations and we are not afraid to experiment.”

With 62 local individuals employed as part of Grubtech’s development and engineering team at present, the organisation is looking to grow their engineering team to 150 plus engineers within the following two quarters and is seeking out engineers that are hungry for innovation. They intend to grow, cultivate and upskill their talent through incentivisation and a number of developmental programs.  Rushanthi giving a further insight emphasised: “We are looking to grow the application team further, so that we could support a 24x7 roster that would provide support for other markets as the organisation grows further into more and more international markets.” 

Additionally, Grubtech has also offered internships opportunities to students of local universities, with plans to expand the internship program even further during the next year. 

Grubtech having proven their ability to build big within a short span of time, looks well set to offer huge potential to Sri Lankan paving the way for up-and-coming engineers and developers priceless career opportunities to be a part of this exciting journey.