Dahmakan, a vertically-integrated Malaysian meal delivery startup, has acquired Polpa to enter Bangkok. Dahmakan was the first Malaysian startup to participate in Y Combinator and recently received a $2.6 million round of funding earmarked for its expansion into new markets.
Polpa shares a similar business model to Dahmakan that helps them differentiate from traditional food delivery startups like Foodpanda and Uber Eats.
To make large-scale meal production and delivery efficient and affordable, the startup relies on its proprietary machine-learning routing technology. The system allows it to produce and begin delivery of more than 1,200 fresh meals in an hour, or a four times higher efficiency than the industry benchmark set by Chipotle
Dahmakan plans to venture into other Southeast Asian markets first, including Jakarta, Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila, before tackling East Asian countries like Japan and Korea.
As it expands, Dahmakan will need to compete with other vertically-integrated food delivery services, the most notable of which is probably Grain in Singapore.
