Saad Saeed has raised $750 million in the latest funding round for start-up Flink. The $2.85 billion company, co-founded by Saeed, delivers groceries. Flink sells groceries at supermarket prices and aims to deliver them in under ten minutes to customers.
This marks its second round of funding after its first raised $240 million. American company DoorDash backs this new funding round, having made a pre-money valuation of $2.1 billion.
Saeed acts as the Director of Technology for Flink. At only a year old, it is making strides serving 10 million customers in 60 cities across four countries.
Saad Saeed: career
Saeed received a scholarship to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Jacobs University Bremen. In the summer of 2010, he founded an organization to help people affected by the devastating floods in Pakistan. After university, he worked at Kreditech, a financial services firm in Hamburg.
In 2019, Saeed founded the health app Crumb. The app incentivises users to get healthy by rewarding fitness activity with vouchers for top brands. Then in 2020, Saeed founded Pickery, Germany’s first on-demand grocery platform, offering over 30k products in 24 hours. This provided him with the perfect experience for launching Flink in November 2020.
A year after the launch of Flink, Saeed has founded a new start-up that is currently in Stealth Mode. He also acts as an advisor, mentor and early-investor in the Q Commerce and logistics space.
Saad Saeed grows into leadership
Saad Saeed is of Pakistani descent and hails from Hamburg, Germany. As a child he wanted to be a football player, looking up to the likes of Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry. “The camaraderie that you build with your team, especially when you play against better teams, is something special. That’s what always attracted me to this sport,” he says.
Saeed self describes as a ‘fitness freak’ and ‘terrible comedian’. In his spare time he likes to travel, drive sports cars and play the piano. He defines his own success by using his love of big data to track goal completion across all areas of life, within a defined period of time.
According to a former manager, Saeed is a team player and a source of inspiration for his co-workers. Intellectually curious, he relishes challenges with grit and perseverance.
For Saeed, a good leader has to “able to unite people with different characters under one vision, to get the best out of them through motivation and pressure – and to really listen to people.”
Saad Saeed founds Flink
Before Flink, Saeed conducted his own market research with his company Pickery. He drove the cars himself and asked customers what they most valued on the doorstep. The answer? Speed. He plans to institute this approach with Flink.
Flink represents his most expansive achievement, employing over 1000 employees in just six months. The advent of COVID provided the perfect opportunity to launch a delivery service. Now with the latest $750 million in funding, Flink plans to continue growing its footprint, aiming to add to its 10 million customers, across 60 cities in four countries.
Having resisted mergers and buyouts from big companies like Amazon, Flink wants to carry on partnering with huge retailers, such as its current strategic backer REWE.
To keep up to date with Saeed, follow him on Instagram and check out Flink.
