CloudEats, a Phiilippine-based cloud restaurant company, has raised $7 million in a fresh funding round led by Nordstar, a London-based venture firm.

CloudEats said in a statement on Friday apart from regional expansion, funds raised in this round will be utilized to further develop its category winning brands such as Burger Beast – now one of the top burger concepts in the Philippines, 24/7 Eats – the country’s first and leading 24-hour online food court that allows consumers to order from over a dozen brands in one basket, and Sulit Chicken, a value-driven chicken brand that has now become its top brand by order volume.

Resources will also be allocated to developing stronger content and expanding marketing efforts for CloudEats’ celebrity brands such as Pia’s Kitchen – a ‘traveling restaurant’ where the menu and cuisine changes quarterly, developed with Pia Wurtzbach a leading personality and ex-Miss Universe, as well as Healthy Appetite, one of the company’s highest repeat purchase concepts that allows health focused customers convenient access to high quality healthy meals featuring nutritional grains like adlai, quinoa and cauliflower rice topped with filling and tasty proteins.

CloudEats is also doubling down on its smart kitchen technology, expanding its development team’s capabilities and onboarding crucial talent in brand and marketing.

With presence in the Philippines and Vietnam, CloudEats has risen to become a major player in the region, serving over 2.5 million orders with its dynamic portfolio of persona-driven, highly innovative cloud restaurants and technology-powered cloud kitchens.

On the back of their successful Vietnam launch, CloudEats is looking forward to opening a third market in the first half of 2023.

“The massive growth of our Vietnam business over the last two quarters is highly encouraging. We are taking the best practices along with key learnings to our next market launch,” said CloudEats Co-Founder Kimberly Yao.

Its Co-Founder Iacopo Rovere said the firm has identified key focus areas in the next twelve months that would include a suite of integrated software as a service (SaaS) solutions for food service as well as intensifying brand building and marketing efforts for its hero and celebrity brands in the form of deeper partnerships with the food delivery platforms, creative offline executions, advanced product innovation, and exploration of new channels.

Cited report by Frost and Sullivan, CloudEats said the $15 billion food delivery market continues to explode in Southeast Asia and is expected to reach $50 billion by 2030.

Euromonitor has also shared that they project the cloud kitchen industry to be a $1 trillion global opportunity by 2030.

CloudEats’ Founders and Board Members who have extensive experience in food delivery and e-commerce companies like Foodpanda, Lazada, Zomato and Alibaba recognize the huge opportunity in developing direct to consumer food brands that can scale up quickly.

CloudEats’ investors, including this round’s lead investor Nordstar, strongly echo this.

“As a global investor in the cloud kitchen space, we are capturing the white space in Southeast Asia’s food delivery market through our investment in CloudEats,” said Kimberley Ong, Principal at Nordstar.

“CloudEats generates the best brand and kitchen-level economics that we have seen in the market, and this is all due to not only the company’s sophisticated technology and operations backbone, but also the team’s unique data and partnership-driven approach to brand building,

“Through the company’s recent expansion to Vietnam, we are already seeing proof points that the successful playbook that the team has built in its home market, the Philippines, is replicable to other markets in the region,” he added.

According to the statement, CloudEats has now raised a total of $14 million as it sets out to revolutionize a massive yet highly traditional food service industry.

It has served over 2.5 million orders and is looking forward to catering to more hungry customers across Southeast Asia.

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