Australian insights platform Appetise, has secured $7 million in Series A funding, less than a year after its entrance into the Australian market.
The meal planning app, Appetise, and its partner B2B insights arm have enjoyed success in Australia by challenging the survey model which fuels much of the current market research industry.
Appetise offers a free meal planning, recipes, and smart shopping app to users across Australia and New Zealand. Through its B2B arm, Appetise Insights, the company translates shopper behaviour into actionable business insights for Australian food and beverage brands.
The round was oversubscribed, led by New Zealand based VC Icehouse Ventures with all investors returning including OIF Ventures, Brand Fund, NZVC, K1W1, and new investment from Ten13.
The capital injection comes 11 months after Appetise launched into Australia, switching its consumer app to a free model to fuel its B2B data engine, Appetise Insights.
The strategy has proven effective, amassing more than 110,000 active users and creating the largest food and beverage insights panel in Australia, with comparable research panels averaging only 18,000 users in Australia and 2,000 in New Zealand.
Following its expansion into Australia in February, the Australian market now accounts for approximately 70 per cent of the company’s overall growth. Revenue has tripled in the past 6 months with 70 Australian brands signing up to the new products, including Kraft Heinz and Lee Kum Kee.
Appetise co-founder and CEO Toby Hilliam said the Series A funding validates the company’s dual model.
“Last year we removed the paid subscriptions to our consumer app, essentially turning off our revenue tap overnight. The bet was that if we removed the cost barrier for consumers while maintaining the valuable Appetise service, we could build the most robust, high-fidelity grocery dataset in Australasia,” said Hilliam.
“That bet has paid off. We aren’t just helping 100,000 households answer the essential ‘what’s for dinner?’ question – we are providing FMCG brands with live, behavioural data that simply doesn’t exist elsewhere. To see revenue triple in six months proves that the industry was starving for these insights.”
Traditional FMCG market research has relied on stated preferences, however there can be a disconnect between a consumer’s reported behaviour and their actual behaviour at the supermarket shelf.
Appetise aims to bridge this by capturing revealed preferences, tracking the full journey from meal selection, shopping list creation, product choice to putting food on the table.
Icehouse Ventures said its decision to lead the round was driven by the team’s ability to find product market fit whilst expanding geographically.
“Appetise is pulling off the difficult feat of growing two entirely different products simultaneously; a genuinely helpful tool for making meals, and a platform that brands can make important business decisions with. Toby and Elise are the rare Swiss army founders who have the broad skillsets to make that work,” said Icehouse Ventures principal Mason Bleakley.
“Appetise has moved beyond being a promising startup to becoming a dominant player in its sector. In under a year, they’ve established significant momentum in Australia, and the data moat they’re building is becoming their greatest asset.”
The funds will be used to further accelerate Australian market growth, enhance the Appetise Insights platform, and prepare the business for expansion into the US market.
“January and February are critical months for grocery,” added Hilliam. “Shoppers are looking to reset their health and their budgets. This capital allows us to double down on our product experience, ensuring we remain the default tool for shoppers, and the default intelligence source for brands.”
