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Meituan’s Keeta recorded its first profitable month in Saudi Arabia in July, 22 months after launch and seven months faster than in Hong Kong.
“This shows that our operational approach can scale well across different overseas markets,” CEO Wang Xing said on Meituan’s second-quarter earnings call.
Keeta took 29 months to reach the same milestone in Hong Kong, where it launched in May 2023. Wang said Saudi was both a much larger market and one Meituan knew relatively little about when it entered in September 2024.
He said the model rests on a straightforward proposition. Consumers want choice, lower prices and reliable delivery, while restaurants want volume, reasonable commissions and dependable fulfilment.
Saudi Arabia has been by all accounts an unusually aggressive test of that model.
Meituan entered the Kingdom with a commitment to invest SAR 1 billion ($267 million) and an aggressively priced consumer proposition. In the months after launch, Keeta said more than 90% of restaurants on its platform were available with free delivery, while launch promotions included a 50% discount on first orders, with new customers also reportedly receiving SAR 100 in sign-up vouchers.
The strategy bought volume quickly, but it also helped trigger a much broader and disruptive repricing of Saudi food delivery.
Redseer, a strategic consulting firm, estimates the Kingdom’s food aggregator market grew 36% in 2025 to SAR 24 billion in gross booking value, close to a quarter of total foodservice spending.
But it says a growing share of that expansion was being bought through promotions rather than coming from organic adoption. Discount intensity rose from 20% of GBV to 36%, while free delivery shifted from a promotional lever to an expected part of the product…
