Asian food e-grocer Alorsfaim raises €4 million

Paris-based Alorsfaim has brought home €4 million in a seed funding round and aims to continue its rapid expansion across the lovers of Asian food community in France and Europe. The funding will be used to further develop the company’s logistics operations as well as expand the team.

Founded in 2018 by Yejun Fan and Yingfeng Li, Alorsfaim started out life as a meal delivery service that had collaborations active with over 600 Asian restaurants, however, addressing the giant panda in the room, the pandemic caused everyone to rethink their business model, Alorsfaim was no exception.

In March of 2020 the company launched an e-grocery delivery service in order to help sustain the Asian community’s access to high-quality ingredients. However, Fan and Li witnessed firsthand the shortcomings of relying on third-party suppliers, particularly in the areas of stock management and customer experience, and the duo decided to simply cut the middleman out and build a better mousetrap themselves.

Having built their own warehouse and inventory management system, in less than a year the startup has expanded to service 5 regions in France and 3 cities in Belgium. This expansion has resulted in 10x of revenues year over year.

Now if the words Asian, food, delivery, and specialist are ringing any bells, you might remember London-based HungryPanda’s healthy $70 million raise about a year ago, bringing the total raised to $90 million. HungryPanda, which is in no way related to FoodPanda, has seen a growth rate of 30x in three years, is currently profitable in the UK and cities like New York, and counts a team of over 500 strong operating in 6 countries around the globe, serving 47 cities. Steep competition no matter how you look at it.

Alorsfaim’s seed round was led by iFly.vc and saw the participation of Cathay Innovation and Goodwater Capital.

On the decision to invest, Cathay Innovation’s Jean-François Cochy comments, “Beyond the first wave of generalist players providing mainstream products, we foresee the emergence of a new generation of players catering to the specific needs of ethnic communities – which are massively underserved. We are convinced Alorsfaim can become a leader in this market in Europe.”