Biography
Yahya Humayun and Syed Wajeeh Haider are the co-founders of Pattern, a MENA-based delivery-tech. They provide software solutions to restaurant groups, meal-kit providers, and grocery stores to start online deliveries and build loyalty programs.
Pattern launched in 2022 and works with clients in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kenya, and South Africa.
Before starting Pattern, Yahya was one of the first employees at Dastgyr, a global B2B e-commerce marketplace that raised a $37M Series A in 2022. He was among the first angel investors in Dastgyr.
Pattern has its own product, but also runs a service business. Why have both?
At its core, Pattern builds SaaS platforms for high-growth sectors such as F&B (food and beverage) — enabling brands to launch their own apps, loyalty engines, and operations dashboards.
Alongside this, Pattern Labs — the services arm — partners with global companies across telecom, mobility, and retail to design and deliver complex software systems. This arm isn’t just a revenue stream — it’s a strategic flywheel: it drives cash flow, sharpens product instincts, and creates privileged access to real-world operational problems.
This hybrid structure helps Pattern move faster, build smarter, and de-risk product bets — all while staying close to the market.
RO insights: startups launching with a service business
Another way to do it is the other way around: start a services business and build context-appropriate products subsequently. This creates an initial roster of clients but, more importantly, gives you granular insights into what problems your (future) product needs to solve.
Here’s how Ope Onaboye, co-founder of Nigerian logistics startup Renda, explains:
“The vision was for companies moving goods to manage their logistics from a single, digital platform. We wanted companies to plug into our platform, no matter how fast they were growing, and seamlessly manage storage, order fulfillment, delivery, and cash collection.
Before building the platform, we sought to understand what our clients needed deeply. We started with a service business, where clients would tell us the deliveries they needed to get done and the storage space they wanted. We’d then manually orchestrate those operations with third-party delivery drivers and storage partners. Working with third parties rather than owning delivery trucks and storage spaces (aka: asset-light) has been ingrained in Renda’s ethos since.
Our MVP’s pertinence was validated by large e-commerce platforms (Jumia, Omnibiz, Marketforce) working with us. We gradually moved from serving small SMEs to large FMCG players, government agencies (who needed to deliver maize, wheat, fertilizers, etc.)… We made our first $1M in revenue before raising money.
We got approached by Techstars in 2022, which put in the first check. We released the v1 of our digital platform in 2023.”
Excerpt from Renda: digitizing African logistics, originally published in The Realistic Optimist
How did your background at Dastgyr inform how you’re building Pattern?
My co-founder (Syed Wajeeh) and I were among the first five people at Dastgyr, a Pakistan-founded, global B2B cross-border marketplace for physical goods. We had to build tech for a physical goods marketplace, which meant building tech for logistics, warehousing, and connecting customers all over the world. We started at Dastgyr when it had $0 revenue and left when it raised $37 million in its Series A round.
The experience at Dastgyr taught us how to build systems that solve real-world problems at scale, but it also showed us the complexity associated with physical goods. When we started Pattern, we decided to focus entirely on software. No logistics, no physical constraints, no physical goods. Just scalable, digital products that can serve customers anywhere.
Why is it the right time for Pattern to exist and scale?
Pattern Technologies (our F&B-focused business) started when we saw restaurants, already low-margin businesses, struggling with the high commissions charged by B2C food-delivery apps (think Uber Eats, Deliveroo, or Talabat, depending on where you live) and unable to build a direct relationship with their customers. They struggled because they didn’t have adequate tech tools, nor the in-house capacity to build them.
Even large restaurant groups (running 20-40 locations) didn’t have the tools to launch a virtual online brand or run their own, multi-brand delivery service through an app. Restaurant groups housing multiple brands found it difficult to build a multi-cart system (where a user can select dishes from multiple brands operated by a single restaurant group) or build a unified loyalty program across brands. They didn’t have the in-house capability to do things like product development, data science, or user retention. And hiring for this would be expensive.
So we started by building white-labeled ordering platforms. Once delivery was addressed, we moved to retention by building loyalty tools. This led us to the meal subscription market, which had different needs like scheduled recurring deliveries.
Along the way, some of our F&B clients referred us to companies in other industries, who had broader tech needs than what our product offered. That’s why we launched Pattern Labs, our service arm. Through Pattern Labs, we’ve expanded from the F&B industry to work with companies in the healthcare, telecom, and the edtech space.
Can you give more granularity as to what Pattern’s product includes?
We offer a suite of products to our clients. It depends on their needs, the number of brands, and the phase of business they’re in. When an F&B client comes to us, we can build a delivery service for their customers and internal tools for them to handle payments, orders, fleet management, and performance tracking. But if they want to focus on retention, we can build a customer loyalty program for them. This can be for a single brand or for multiple brands within the same restaurant group.
For example, one of our clients operates over seven cloud kitchen brands in Kenya and South Africa. Because they operated under one group, they wanted integrations across brands for delivery, loyalty, and tracking.
Their customers could order multiple dishes from different cloud kitchens on a single app. We enabled their delivery drivers to intelligently batch deliveries from those different cuisines. Loyalty points from one brand could be used to redeem rewards in a different brand. In this case, we provided the full product suite of delivery, loyalty, and internal tools management.
Another Middle Eastern client, which operates over 100 brands, only wanted the delivery and loyalty service (for all their brands) but not the fleet management integration, because they already used third-party logistics providers. In that case, we integrated our tools with their existing processes.
You mentioned working with meal subscription companies. Operationally, these greatly differ from a traditional restaurant. How do you work with them?
Indeed, our product is different on the meal subscription side. Here, we also have to focus on pre- and post-delivery metrics. For instance, before the meal is decided, the customer has to specify their goals, and based on this, they are recommended meals by nutritionists, which implies building a recommendation dashboard.
Once the meal is delivered, the company will want to track recurring orders, retention across the subscription lifecycle, the customers’ progress, and even AI-driven meal suggestions. But they still use the same loyalty and fleet management modules.
Essentially, our service depends on the type of business (physical restaurants going digital, cloud kitchens, grocery, or subscription-based meal plans), and we tailor our product suite.
What is your customer split between restaurant, grocery, and meal subscription? And which segment is the fastest growing?
The split keeps evolving, but it’s a balanced split between restaurants, grocery, and meal prep. But within restaurants, there is a clear gap. Single-brand restaurants are the smallest segment for us, because it’s hard to convince customers to download a separate app for a single restaurant (unless it’s a huge brand like KFC or Pizza Hut). In contrast, cloud kitchen companies enjoy a larger value proposition because a user will log into a single app and see 10 brands serving 10 different cuisines.
That being said, our fastest-growing segment is meal subscription because those companies have no alternatives.
Restaurants can either build their own delivery fleet and technology or rely on B2C food-delivery companies like Uber Eats, Talabat, etc. But meal subscription companies can’t rely on those apps, which aren’t adapted to their model.
Some meal subscription services use WhatsApp to coordinate deliveries. And this coordination happens on two sides, on the nutritionist side (who curates the meals based on customer goals) and on the customer side (who receives these meals in a recurring and timely schedule). Not to mention the hassle of payments, returns, and refunds.
Meal subscription companies like Saudi Arabia's Calo (which just raised a $64 million Series B in December 2024) can build technology that solves this problem. But smaller meal subscription companies, which do not have this kind of capital, time, or resources, cannot build this tech and rely on companies like Pattern to build this tech for them.
How do you price your product?
In the beginning, we experimented with pricing but have now settled on a standard subscription of $1,500 per month for up to 10 brands within a single restaurant group. In some cases, when we see potential in clients and markets, we might go lower than that. But that’s an exception. The standard is $1,500 per month for (n) number of brands.
This fee includes everything, from the delivery to the loyalty, to the tools for fleet, analytics, etc. And it is inclusive of all the brands a restaurant group has, be it one or one hundred. It helps us hone in on our ideal customer profile, as a single-brand restaurant or small cloud kitchen cannot justify this spend; it appeals to larger groups that want to build out a single delivery module for their entire brand offerings.
That being said, if the client is an enterprise and requires a heavy deployment, our price generally increases.
Meal subscriptions is your fastest-growing vertical. The concept has indeed exploded in popularity over the past few years. What is driving this trend, and what could threaten it?
To be clear, I don’t think meal subscriptions are a fad. They’re here to stay! People are becoming health-conscious, and they want convenient, high-quality meals without the friction of having to decide what to eat. Meal subscriptions solve for both aspects. Some speculate that Dubaï will soon see the rise of apartment buildings without kitchens, because residents rely entirely on ordering in and meal subscriptions.
The other reason is urban traffic. With people in urban cities leading a busy and time-constrained life, having a pre-decided and pre-scheduled meal service saves on time and decision fatigue.
Interestingly, demand for our meal-subscription products isn’t solely from meal subscription-focused startups. Some restaurant groups have the existing infrastructure, kitchen, and even delivery fleet, so are adding meal subscription services themselves.
To them, it not only generates additional revenue but also predictable revenue via the subscription model. There’s also little additional cost to add this vertical. I’ve seen some big restaurant groups, especially in the UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, launch meal subscription services.
What have you learned from startups building similar products in other geographies?
Broadly speaking, we see a 3-5 year lag between the US market and the Middle East market, especially countries like the UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.
In the US, we’ve looked at companies like Lunchbox, Owner, and Olo that build SaaS solutions for restaurants moving online. When we started, there weren’t any major players doing similar things in the GCC region.
The difference between both markets is the perception of B2C food-delivery companies.
Right now, in the UAE for instance, these companies are seen positively, similarly to how DoorDash was viewed in the US a few years ago. Over time, this changes. As these companies grow, they want to improve their own unit economics and margins. To achieve this, they cut back on the discounts they gave restaurants to get them on the platform, and this leads to losses for restaurants. Eventually, restaurants realize the value of having in-house direct ordering and loyalty channels.
On the meal plan side, which doesn’t fit into food-delivery apps anyway, there’s little competition for tech tools that serve them. That’s why it’s growing fast in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.
What we see in the US will become quite obvious in the Middle East in the next 3-5 years. Until this happens, we want to capture as much market share as possible.
RO insights: the Pakistan-GCC startup corridor
There’s a link between the Pakistani and the GCC’s startup ecosystem.
Both are complementary: Pakistan has a massive domestic market, while the GCC boasts high spending power and investor-recognized jurisdictions. In some cases, such as remittance startups, the flow of money from the GCC to Pakistan can be an interesting market opportunity.
Here’s how Omair Ansari, the co-founder of Abhi, a Pakistani fintech startup, explains their decision to move to the UAE early:
“[Our typical client personas are] mostly blue and grey-collar workers from Pakistan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, our three markets.
Choosing those markets as our initial ones wasn’t a coincidence. A lot of workers from Pakistan move to the GCC for work and send money back to their families. It made sense to connect that corridor.
One of the products we’ve launched this year is a “send-now-pay-later” product, enabling workers to send their earned wages to their families before they receive their full wage.
[...]
We moved out of Pakistan and opened in the UAE rapidly. That was a game-changer, as it helped us raise funds. Many investors are wary of Pakistan’s macro-situation, so showing we’re also present in a stable, wealthier market alleviates some of those concerns.”
Excerpt from Abhi: earned wage access as a door to credit, originally published in The Realistic Optimist
How do you pick the clients you work with, and what drives retention?
We’re picky in choosing our clients. We prefer working with established brands. Once such brands launch their app and loyalty program with us and see the benefits, it becomes harder to switch out.
And once the proof of concept is established, restaurants start optimizing and investing to improve user acquisition, engagement, and retention. Over time, they build a base of steady downloads and active users. This contributes to ballooning switching costs on their end, which is great news for us.
The longer a client stays, the more embedded we become, and the stronger the retention.
Why don’t restaurants just build their own apps in-house?
Most of our clients actually tried to build their own app before coming to us. Restaurant groups initially wanted to build their own technology team to build the app from scratch. But this involves a lot of costs, on the infrastructure and hiring front.
Then it’s a matter of building a software team, but hiring full-time software engineers and product managers to build a custom solution in-house is often expensive. The best engineers are drawn to big tech companies, not restaurant groups, which makes hiring and retaining talent even harder. Most restaurant groups simply don’t have the capacity to manage both tech hiring and day-to-day operations. That’s when they come to us.
Clients realize that building just one part (delivery) requires integrating other essential elements like logistics, payments, analysis, and even loyalty. They realize that doing all of this is a comprehensive task, and they’d rather have a tech company to do this right, while they focus on the core F&B side of the business.
Just like we wouldn’t try to run a restaurant, it’s tough for a restaurant to build and maintain complex software. It’s a different business entirely.
RO insights: leveraging one's vertical focus
Tech companies selling to large institutions can often be met with an easy criticism: the institution you sell to has the resources to build your solution in-house, so why do they need you?
Having the resource doesn’t mean having the know-how, the time, the energy, or the will to build something. Startups can leverage that gap by being hyper-focused on a problem a large company could potentially solve, but simply doesn’t have the bandwidth or the correct incentives to do so.
Here’s how Bernardo Garcia (disclaimer: an investor in The Realistic Optimist), explains how remittance startup Félix Pago (the startup he co-founded) thinks about “competing” with other neobanks’ own remittance products:
“Opening up a US remittance product implies a heavy regulatory lift, mostly because each individual US state (all 50 of them) have their own regulatory requirements. These companies, for whom remittance would be an additional vertical on top of their existing products, might not see that burden as worth it.
In the context of a remittance product, I also believe these fintech companies want their users to have optionality (ie, having the most amount of ways to receive money, which directly benefits a fintech holding those deposits). By relying on Félix, they can enable that optionality (we integrate with almost anyone) instead of building all of those individual relationships themselves.”
Excerpt from FelixPago: WhatsApp, crypto and remittances, originally published in The Realistic Optimist
Do you plan to raise money to expand Pattern? If so, how do you envision Pattern evolving?
We’ve raised a small pre-seed round back in 2022. As of two months ago, we became profitable, so we’re not looking to raise any outside capital and plan to self-fund our growth.
That said, any fundraising would be modest. We’re lean, capital efficient, and focused on self-funded growth. Our goal is to continue increasing profitability and scale sustainably for now.
The Realistic Optimist’s work is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, business, investment, or tax advice.