Tell us about yourself, your background and your journey to founding Valetcart.
Over the last 15 years, I’ve been obsessed with technology, e-commerce, and above all – digital customer experience. I launched my first e-commerce startup back in 2006. Later, I spent a decade running my own digital agency where we automated online sales for banks and insurance companies. It was there, in 2016, that we first applied AI to personalize the customer journey.
In 2022, I moved to the UAE and immersed myself in the world of robotics for FMCG. That same year, I had the idea of using AI to automate online basket assembly. At the end of 2024, I founded Valetcart to bring that idea to life.
What inspired you to found Valetcart?
It deeply bothers me how much time people waste – and the stress they endure – just trying to complete an online grocery order. And when I realized we already have all the technologies needed to automate this with AI, I couldn’t think of doing anything else. I didn’t want to eat or sleep – I just wanted to build Valetcart.
What is your company’s mission?
We give people back their time – to spend with family, loved ones, on hobbies, learning, or anything else that matters to them.
What features does Valetcart offer FMCG retailers?
Valetcart assembles personalized grocery baskets on behalf of the customer – optimized for retailer profitability, fulfillment efficiency, and loyalty retention. Our AI accounts for real-time inventory, customer preferences, delivery costs, and margin targets to pre-fill the ideal cart.
If an item is out of stock, we automatically substitute it with the most relevant and profitable alternative. We also help retailers move promotional or near-expiry items by placing them in the baskets of shoppers most likely to buy – ensuring offers land with the right customers and stock doesn’t go to waste.
How are you revolutionizing how FMCG retailers interact with their online customers?
We do the heavy lifting for the customer. No more thinking about what to buy, no more spending time assembling the basket or hunting for substitutes. Open the app, see a ready-made basket, review, pay – done.
It takes five minutes instead of 30-40 for a full weekly grocery shop for a typical household.
What makes Valetcart unique and sets you apart from your competitors?
We’re creating a new kind of loyalty for retailers – not based on discounts or points, but on experience, history, and data.
92% of iPhone users never switch to Android. Why? Because they’re afraid to lose their photos, messages, and app history. We’re creating that same kind of emotional lock-in.
After one month, a customer is used to having their basket built automatically. After three months, they don’t want to switch retailers – because they’re afraid to lose the accuracy and convenience that comes from their shopping history.
What has been your biggest success as a company?
We’ve only just begun – we’re about six months in – but I’ve been able to assemble a phenomenal international team.
We’ve been accepted into the DIFC Innovation Hub, and I want to personally thank the Dubai government and the DIFC leadership for creating such an extraordinary environment for startups. The support they provide is real and deeply appreciated.
Our biggest success so far? We’ve built an MVP on our own – without raising a single cent from investors – that’s already strong enough to begin negotiations with major retailers about pilot programs.
How do you plan to expand Valetcart?
Right now, we’re focused on securing pilot projects with retailers and digital delivery services. We’re also beginning to raise venture funding to support this phase.
We plan to start implementing pilot programs in early next year and begin generating revenue by year-end.
Our launch market is the UAE, of course – but our next steps are the rest of the GCC, then Europe and the US. We also have ideas on how this type of automation could be applied in other industries, but for the next 2–3 years, we’re laser-focused on FMCG.
What partners are you looking for to help pilot and scale your ecosystem?
Primarily large chain retailers and digital delivery services. Right now, they’re all locked in a fierce battle for the weekly family basket – and integrating Valetcart into their existing apps is the fastest, most effective way to win that battle online.
What would make a great investor or strategic partner for you right now?
A great investor or strategic partner for us now is someone with smart money: the money comes with insights, contacts, and commitment. Whether it’s an angel investor with e-commerce success under their belt, a venture fund focused on retail innovation, or even a strategic corporate partner from the retail sector, we value those who can actively contribute to our mission. They would help us not only financially, but by refining our strategy, expanding our reach, and possibly integrating Valetcart into the right networks to scale faster. If they are reading this, we’d be excited to have a conversation!
What future trends do you see for the UAE ecommerce industry?
Right now, the biggest challenge I see is that technology – especially AI – has evolved far faster than how we’re actually using it.
Yes, there are great solutions for smart cities, real estate, and e-commerce. But mostly, we’re still behaving like cavemen with an iPhone – using AI to generate chatbots or silly images.
I think the main trend of the coming years will be using AI for real-life value: automating routine tasks that people don’t enjoy and that consume too much time. And ecommerce is full of exactly these kinds of tasks.
Remember: before washing machines, families spent 11 hours a week doing laundry. With modern machines – just 1.5 hours. That’s a full workday freed up.
It’s the same with weekly grocery shopping: 2 hours per week today, just 5 minutes with Valetcart. Now imagine that impact at the scale of a city, a country – even just Dubai. How much more could people create, learn, or build with all that freed-up time?
We’re standing on the brink of a productivity revolution. The future of e-commerce in MENA is automation of the mundane – to give people back their time for creativity, for living.
And the more time people have, the more deeply they’ll develop and integrate technologies – creating a positive feedback loop.
What’s next for Valetcart over the next 12–18 months and beyond?
In addition to pilot launches, fundraising, and generating revenue, our biggest intellectual challenge now is training our AI on large-scale data sets.
So far, we’ve trained it using the catalog of a smaller retailer. The next step is to scale that to product catalogs of 100,000+ SKUs.
Once we master that – we’ll be ready for our next big leap. But for now, that’s still under wraps.
How can readers find out more?
Yes, we have a website – but today, a website is like a printed business card: nice-looking, but not very useful.
I dedicate real time to LinkedIn – both my personal page and our company page. I don’t use assistants. I write and read everything myself because I think it’s critical.
So follow us, reach out, connect – I’m always happy to meet new people.
