• UAE-based martech startup Growdash has raised $1.8 million in a Seed round, led by Oryx Fund and Oraseya Capital.
• Founded in 2022 by Sean Trevaskis and Enver Sorkun, Growdash enables restaurant marketing and operational teams to build, execute and manage profitable growth strategies across digital sales channels.
• Growdash will use the new funding to accelerate its expansion plans into Saudi Arabia later this year.

Press release:

Growdash, a Dubai based purpose-built SaaS platform that enables restaurant marketing and operational teams to build, execute and manage profitable growth strategies across digital sales channels, today announced it has raised AED6.8 million ($1.8 million) in a Seed round. The seed funding was led by Oryx Fund, a MENA focused investment fund from Hambro Perks, and Oraseya Capital, the venture capital arm of Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority (DIEZ).

Growdash was launched in 2022 by Sean Trevaskis and Enver Sorkun, former employees of Talabat, the online food delivery company. Together, they have built Growdash into the leading restaurant analytics and business intelligence technology in the region, working with over 300 restaurant brands across 4000 locations in the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar.

In light of the announcement, Sean Trevaskis, CEO, stated, "We are delighted to have closed our seed round; we would like to publicly thank our highly driven and deeply passionate team of Growdashian’s, plus our forward-thinking customers who, rightly, demand access to the best data analytics and digital growth strategies."

"The participation of highly respected global and regional investors, including Oryx, Oraseya Capital and Hub71, is a testament to the strong progress we have delivered. Further validation from follow-on investors such as TPN Investments and GCC Angels; plus new participation from industry-leading angels like AngelSpark, Mohamed Zourob and Abdullah Mohamad, give us increasing confidence in the strong market opportunity and the quality of the product that our team is building." 

Enver Sorkun, Chief Experience Officer (CXO), commented; "We are continuing to build a best-in-class tech stack that will enable restaurants to tackle a huge industry-wide ROI opportunity. Restaurants deserve technology that enables them to operate their digital growth strategies and investments in a data-driven, autonomous manner via a purpose-built suite, just like their e-commerce counterparts have been able to achieve over the past 10 years through resources like Shopify."

Discussing how the business plans to expand, Enver continued, "With our seed financing, we will accelerate our product roadmap, doubling-down on machine learning and building new, innovative features that align with our product methodology of: insight, decision, action."

Sean added, "We will also open our technology to restaurants in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia later this year and have exciting plans to seize the first-mover opportunity that is apparent in Central Eastern Europe."

Speaking of their investment in Growdash, Ali Qaiser, General Partner at Oryx Fund and Hambro Perks, mentioned; "We believe Growdash is a game changer for the region's competitive food and beverage sector by integrating all digital data points from food aggregators and their broader digital presence into a single business intelligence platform. We are excited about Growdash’s growth potential and look forward to supporting their scaling efforts by leveraging the power of data."

Julien Plouzeau, Senior Partner at Oraseya Capital, added, "Through its investments, Oraseya Capital is keen on fostering innovation and advancing growth within the MENA region. Growdash’s cutting-edge software is the perfect profile for the type of innovative startups we’re looking to support, ones with a promising future ahead. Sean & Enver have an early-mover advantage in a fast-growing segment, enabling growth strategies across digital sales channels and drastically increasing ROI on growth and marketing spends. We are particularly impressed with their deep understanding of the F&B industry's challenges, as ex-operators, and their ability to build a scalable, robust tech infrastructure."