Rebel Foods, the newly minted cloud kitchen unicorn, will be scaling up its partnership with global food and grocery delivery platform Foodpanda in order to expand on an international scale.

The alliance between Foodpanda and Rebel Foods is not a new one – in fact, they had teamed up in December 2019. However, the sudden onset of the pandemic halted their plans. Now, several of Rebel Foods’ virtual restaurant brands such as Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, The Biryani Life, Lunchbox, and Honest Bowl (along with new ones – 10 online food brands in total) will be rolled out by Foodpanda in over 2000 outlets within Asia through an initial five-year partnership, starting in six markets. Foodpanda and Rebel Foods will have a new joint offering in Honest Bowl as well.

This is the largest virtual brand partnership in Asia.

Based on a brands-as-a-service (BaaS) model, this alliance will allow Foodpanda’s restaurant partners to plug-and-play Rebel Foods brands, as well as earn additional revenue. Rebel Foods has already introduced four brands across six markets — Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Hong Kong, and the Philippines — through the Foodpanda network, and now, they are taking it one step further.

Foodpanda, a subsidiary of Germany-based Delivery Hero, is known to operate in more than 400 locations in Asia, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Pakistan, Taiwan, Philippines, Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Japan. It lets customers have access to a wide range of food and groceries, and works with its strong network of over 1,15,000 restaurants partners across 12 markets within Asia. Its business in India had earlier been acquired by Ola.

Rebel Foods, which became a unicorn after raising $175 million earlier this year, has over 4,000 internet restaurants in total. It claims that more than 200 outlets across the six markets have already signed up to add its brands on the Foodpanda app to their existing food and beverage (F&B) offerings.