With impeccable timing, KL-born Dahmakan has secured USD2.6 million (RM10.4 million) in pre-Series A funding, just in time for those new year health resolutions to kick in.
The value surpasses Dahmakan’s initial target of USD1.7 million (RM6.78 million) “due to the overwhelming interest from global investors after Y Combinator”, according to Jessica Li, co-founder of the food enterprise.
“We usually subscribe to the strategy that you should only raise money when you don’t need it. Having a short runway puts the entrepreneur at risk of not being able to set fair terms.”
– Jessica Li, co-founder of Dahmakan
“We also strongly believe in having smart money—which is to say, value-adding investors who have expertise and networks—that can help us to build the business,” continued Jessica.
As you may know, Dahmakan is a delivery service created by a small team of foodpanda alumni. They joined the startup fray in 2015 with one main kicker: Dahmakan cooks and delivers healthy dishes to customers in the Klang Valley area.
By securing the supply chain from prep to delivery, Dahmakan’s mission is to cut the middlemen out of food delivery marketplaces, and funneling that value into affordable, healthy food. There are no delivery fees, nor minimum orders.
And they’ve had a very busy 2017.
This new round was led by Y Combinator, Texas Atlantic Capital, Swiss family office Atami Capital and a former founder of PE Fund APAX Partners with participation from undisclosed existing investors.
This is probably a natural development after Dahmakan became the only Malaysian startup to join the acclaimed startup accelerator, Y Combinator, in 2017.
They raised a separate USD1.3 million (RM5.19 million) in seed funding in February 2017, which funded a self-learning system based on 24 different A.I. components.
The Dahmakan DIOS is a self-learning operating system that “knows everything that is happening on the delivery side”. Its application, according to Jessica, continues to improve deliveries with each ride.
Thanks to the system, they say they’re able to get more than 95% of their deliveries on-time.
Now, the company feels empowered enough to roll out a 30-minute delivery guarantee to their Prime subscribers, or users get a free meal to their accounts. They’re the only company besides Dominoes that’s rolled this out so far.
Here’s how they’re using the money.
Thanks to the injection, Dahmakan will be rolling out a new design for the app. Jessica said, “it’s going to have a lot more information and content about the food, preparation, and our chefs.”
They’ll also be adding live tracking for deliveries (finally!) on a map similar to Grab and Uber. This will be coming out in a few weeks.
Participation in Y Combinator has clearly been fruitful for Dahmakan, with the accelerator leading the funding round that has exceeded the local foodmaker’s expectations.
This also marks a monumental moment for Malaysian startups as well, and may pave the way for more B2C startups to see growth at Dahmakan’s calibre.
- Dahmakan is a food delivery startup that handles everything between cooking healthy meals to delivering them into Klang Valley, and has just secured RM10.4 million in pre-series A funding.
- Their previous funding round led to the development of a self-learning operating software, which helped them achieve more than 95% on-time deliveries.
- Thanks to the new investment, Dahmakan will be rolling out a new design for the app. It will provide much more information about the food and the chefs so that users can make informed decisions.
