Raha, Kuwait’s newest e-grocery platform, has announced that it has officially launched in the Kuwait market, with its app now available on all Apple iPhones and Samsung Android devices.
Established and based in Kuwait, Raha is the Middle East’s first pure-play, fully automated e-grocery platform - offering a full range of groceries, fresh produce, and household essentials. With an innovative concept and a technology-driven operational model, Raha’s easy-to-navigate smart platform leverages users’ data and insights to provide a personalized customer journey unlike any other in the market, with made-to-order items, easy step-by-step customization, tailored recipes, and an impressively wide range of varieties across all product segments.
Raha was created and designed by a diverse team of driven young talents, who bring with them wide ranging expertise and experience in the fields of grocery retail, e-commerce, and tech development in the region. The company has completed its seed round of funding, with an impressive capital of USD 6.7 million raised by Saudi and Kuwaiti backers, as well as an international VC. According to Saleh Al-Tunaib, the CEO and Co-Founder of the company, Raha was conceived as a digital operation first and foremost, with technology and innovation being the driving notion at the heart of its conception. “From the outset, the goal was to develop a pure play digital retail operation that combined operational excellence with a simplified, intelligent user experience. Every step of the customer journey – from first login to final order delivery – has been carefully designed to deliver maximum convenience. We wanted to translate and elevate the traditional grocery experience at its absolute best to a seamless digital experience,” said Al-Tunaib.
The Raha Team
Raha’s heavy investment in the infrastructure of both its software and product technology built a self-serving operational model that is now Kuwait’s first robotic fulfillment center. Concurrently, Raha successfully launched a fully-automated chilled fulfillment center - making it one of the first of its kind globally. This achievement introduces to the entire region the emerging trend of intralogistics, which is proving to shape the future of the eCommerce industry worldwide.
With a core commitment to hit quality and freshness benchmarks across every order, Raha employs a completely temperature-controlled and precise process. The full cycle of logistics - from procurement to last-mile delivery - is systematic and precisely controlled. Dedicated areas for the in-house preparation of meats, poultry, fish, and deli items offer consumers unparalleled freshness when coupled with Raha’s unique indoor dispatch area. Their trained fleet carry out the last-mile delivery that is route-optimized and time-efficient to complete the full cycle, seamlessly inserting Raha’s redefined grocery experience into the online commerce space that users are increasingly migrating to today. Additionally, Raha offers a nutritionally categorized assortment to fit all lifestyles and a unique feature in the form of Raha Recipes: a one click add-to-cart recipes component, with recipes produced in-house using only items available in the app.
“The events of the past few years have driven many retail businesses towards the digital domain, as a matter of survival and business continuity. For some sectors, that transition has been smoother and easier than for others,” noted Al-Tunaib. “Case in point is the grocery delivery industry, where it has proven to be difficult to migrate or adapt the existing brick and mortar operations to the digital realm without sacrificing certain elements such as freshness of delivery, customization of orders and efficiency of experience. That is what we tried to remedy at Raha, building an independent original concept that delivers on the needs of the modern consumer and their lifestyle needs.”