Talabat

Talabat (talabat Holding plc) is the leading online food delivery and quick-commerce platform in the Middle East and North Africa, headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Originally founded in Kuwait in 2004 and acquired by Germany's Delivery Hero in 2015, talabat completed its initial public offering on the Dubai Financial Market in December 2024 — the largest global technology IPO of that year and the first technology listing on the DFM — while remaining majority-owned by Delivery Hero SE.

The platform operates across eight MENA markets, including the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, connecting millions of consumers with restaurants, grocery stores and retail partners. Its services span restaurant food delivery, grocery and retail delivery, pharmacy and flower delivery, and the DineOut dining-deals programme. Of particular relevance to FMCG suppliers is tMart, talabat's own quick-commerce grocery service, which promises delivery of groceries and everyday essentials in around 20 minutes from a network of company-operated dark stores. Through tMart, talabat buys, stocks and retails a broad FMCG assortment in its own right — fresh and chilled food, ambient groceries, snacks and confectionery, beverages, personal care and household products — making it a direct purchaser of consumer goods at regional scale, alongside the marketplace groceries it delivers from partner supermarkets.

Talabat's 2024 results underline its scale: gross merchandise value grew 23% to a record USD 7.4 billion, revenue grew 32% to USD 3.0 billion (approximately €2.8 billion), adjusted EBITDA rose 55% to nearly half a billion US dollars, and net income reached USD 346 million. The platform served over 6.5 million active customers as of December 2024 and works with a fleet of more than 119,000 delivery partners across the region.

For FMCG manufacturers and brands, talabat represents a distinctive buyer profile: a technology-driven online retailer and quick-commerce operator whose dark-store grocery business sources food, beverage, personal care and household products for direct sale, and whose advertising and retail-media capabilities offer suppliers additional routes to MENA consumers. Its combination of regional coverage, rapid delivery infrastructure and growing own-inventory grocery operations makes it one of the most significant digital FMCG buyers in the Middle East.