Consumer/Food/News/

Arab and Turkish grocery delivery startup Yababa raises a huge seed round

It's the latest in a wave of new grocery companies hoping to diversify the food on offer

By Freya Pratty

Ralph Hage, founder of Yababa

Yababa, a grocery delivery company focused on multicultural produce, has raised a $15.5m seed round. It’s the latest in a wave of new companies looking to diversify the online grocery delivery market. 

The round was led by Creandum and Project A, with existing investor FoodLabs also participating. 

Yababa launched in parts of Berlin over the summer and expanded to the whole city in October, initially focusing on Turkish and Arab communities. It offers same day delivery and says the most popular products on its app are meat, bread and fruit. 

“Our purpose is to deliver a taste of home, by giving Europe’s diverse communities easy access to multicultural groceries,” says Ralph Hage, founder of Yababa.

“Today billions of people are living far from their country of origin and food is the closest they have to home.”

The company plans to expand to Cologne next, and wants to be operational in seven German cities by the end of 2022. It says it’ll broaden out from Turkish and Arab communities to serve others too.

The new, more diverse wave of grocery apps

Yababa isn’t the only European startup working to diversify the products people can buy online. Earlier this month Oja, a London-based company, raised a $3.3m seed round for its online grocery service, focused initially on Nigerian, Ghanaian and Jamaican food.

There’s also Alorsfaim, a French startup specialising in Asian food, which raised €4m in seed funding last month and is delivering across Paris. 

Another is Mixe Store, which began in France but now serves 16 countries, and focuses on bringing products over from India and Pakistan to expat communities in Europe.

Freya Pratty is Sifted’s news reporter. She tweets from @FPratty