Middle Eastern food delivery startup Calo said Tuesday it has raised $39 million in a Series B extension that was led by AlJazira Capital. The fundraise, which was greater than 1.5x of its original $25 million raise in December, also saw participation from existing backers reminiscent of Nuwa Capital, STV, Khwarizmi Ventures, and Al Faisaliah Group.
The corporate is using this funding to expand into territories just like the UK and in addition explore different partnerships in physical space.
Calo primarily offers ready-to-eat meals that customers can heat up later. The corporate delivers different plans to cater to varied health goals. The corporate’s founder, Ahmed Al Rawi, told TechCrunch the startup’s revenue grew by “near 100%.” Calo delivered greater than 10 million meals last yr in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. While Al Rawi didn’t provide a number for this yr, he said the deliveries were growing consistent with revenue.
Those numbers, together with its brand, technology, and operational excellence, convinced AlJazira Capital to speculate within the Saudi company. “Calo represents a compelling opportunity on the intersection of healthtech, foodtech, and consumer subscription models,” Rawan AlRasheed, director of enterprise capital at AlJazira Capital, told TechCrunch in a press release.
The startup can be making moves to expand within the UK, where last yr it acquired two meal delivery services, Fresh Fitness Food and Detox Kitchen. While Fresh Fitness Food didn’t raise any money, Detox Kitchen had raised just over $3.4 million via a mixture of venture-backed and equity crowdfunding rounds, based on Crunchbase data.
“We spoke to over 50 meal subscription businesses worldwide, starting from the U.S. to Asia, in 2023-24 to study what’s an exciting marketplace for us to expand to. We realized the UK was the best marketplace for us to expand. We thought that each corporations that we acquired had an excellent culture fit to work with Calo,” Al Rawi told TechCrunch over a call.
He added that Calo acquired these businesses because that they had their operational layer found out, and the startup just desired to upscale the tech and branding layer.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
Al Rawi said Calo spent most of this yr integrating its technology and process with each UK platforms without shedding any of the present personnel. The startup finished the mixing work in July and has been slowly making a marketing push within the UK.
Calo can currently deliver meals in London day by day and in other parts of the UK two to thrice per week. The founder said that Calo is targeting to get to 10x its revenue within the UK in the following three years.
Those UK ambitions can be met with competition. Aside from traditional food delivery giants like Just Eat and Deliveroo, Calo may even compete with meal-box services reminiscent of Gusto and Wicked Kitchen.
While Calo is concentrated on growing within the UK, the corporate can be looking to accumulate different meal-kit services the world over. The corporate can be expanding physical locations, including retail stores and kiosks in other regions. The corporate has also partnered with a gym chain called Armah Sports Company in Saudi Arabia to supply a bundle of Calo and gym subscription.