Mintiply Capital to lead AED 1.2bn GCC F&B and e-commerce investment opportunity
Mintiply Capital says it is leading an AED 1.2 billion investment opportunity tied to the strategic exit of one of the GCC’s fastest-growing food and beverage groups, positioning the asset for acquisition by regional and international investors.
On paper, this is an F&B story. Under the hood, it’s an omnichannel infrastructure story: a business built across supermarkets, cafés, bakeries, catering and digital food delivery, backed by an integrated online delivery platform that has grown alongside the physical footprint over more than a decade.
Mintiply says it is advising end-to-end — valuation, structuring, investor onboarding, regulatory coordination, acquisition framework, cross-jurisdictional compliance, and diligence.
What’s being sold (and why that matters more than the headline number)
The asset is described as sitting between high-end gourmet retailers and value-driven supermarkets, with a portfolio that includes branded and private-label offerings. That matters because private label is one of the few levers that can improve margins and differentiation in a world where delivery fees and performance marketing eat the economics.
The company’s e-commerce platform is positioned as a “cornerstone” of customer engagement, driving growth across physical and digital channels. Translation: the platform isn’t just a sales channel — it’s a data and frequency engine.
Why this deal matters now
The GCC is in a cross-border M&A upswing. EY’s MENA M&A Insights 9M 2025 notes a 23% rise in M&A activity in the first nine months of 2025 to 649 deals (US$69.1bn total value), with the GCC accounting for the majority of deals. Mintiply is explicitly riding that appetite.
Consumers are shopping both online and in-store — and the winners are “joined up”. Google/Visa research on commerce in the UAE and Saudi points to rising online and offline behaviour across peak periods, reinforcing the opportunity for businesses that can coordinate inventory, promotions and fulfilment across channels.
Grocery and last-mile are shifting from growth-at-all-costs to unit economics. Market commentary increasingly emphasises discipline and operational efficiency in quick commerce. That change favours assets that already have the hard bits: stores, supply relationships, and a delivery layer that’s integrated rather than bolted on.
Globally, M&A is recovering — capital is looking for scaled, defensible platforms. Reuters reports global M&A value up 10% in the first nine months of 2025 (to US$1.938tn), a backdrop that supports cross-border hunting for assets with predictable cash flows.
How this helps B2B2C players (and why they should care)
B2B2C is simplest: one business reaches consumers through another business’s channel while still shaping the end-customer experience. In the GCC, that “channel” is increasingly a super-app, telco wallet, bank app, loyalty coalition, workplace platform, or marketplace — not a standalone retailer.
An integrated F&B + delivery ecosystem is valuable to B2B2C players because it offers three “plug-in surfaces”:
Demand surface (consumer reach): If you own consumer distribution (telco/bank/super-app), partnering with a high-frequency category like food can increase daily opens, subscription attach, and loyalty stickiness — without building stores yourself. (Food is one of the few categories that can train habit.)
Supply surface: If you serve SMEs (B2B platforms, procurement, payments), a scaled operator with private label can become an anchor tenant for supplier financing, inventory programmes, and co-manufacturing — the unsexy part that actually compounds advantage.
Fulfilment surface (last-mile capacity): If you run logistics, payments or embedded credit, an omnichannel operator gives you repeatable volumes and predictable baskets — ideal for underwriting, route density, and negotiated rates. This is where “B2B2C” becomes practical: each party does what they’re best at, and the consumer sees one coherent experience.