Exclusive | China’s Meituan to expand Keeta food delivery service to more Middle East cities, sources say
Wang Xing, founder and CEO of Meituan, said last week that the company has seen some ‘encouraging results’ in Saudi Arabia
Chinese food delivery giant Meituan, which operates the Keeta brand in Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, is set to expand to more Middle Eastern and North African countries, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Keeta, which launched in the Saudi Arabian city of Al-Kharj in September and has since entered the capital Riyadh, will be available in Dammam and Jeddah, two other major cities in the Gulf nation, by year end, the two people said.
The platform will then go to Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holiest cities, by January 2025. Keeta’s plan is to cover 80 per cent of Saudi Arabia by July 2025, one of the sources said.
It also has ambitious plans for the rest of the Middle East, including expanding to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain likely next year, the two people said. As most of the customer service team is in Jordan, that country is also in its pipeline, one of the people said.
Keeta had considered expanding to Iraq, but recently dropped the plan due to “political and safety issues”, they said.
