Eureka: Building consumer apps for brands in under a week with no coding required

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Entrepreneurs — Eureka: Building Consumer Apps for Brands in Under a Week with No Coding Required

Podcast: The Entrepreneurs
Host: Tom Edwards (Monocle)
Guest: David Brunier, Founder & CEO of Kata
Date: September 19, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features David Brunier, founder and CEO of Kata, a Singapore-based SaaS platform that empowers restaurants and retailers to quickly launch fully branded consumer apps—without the need for coding or heavy upfront investment. David shares his entrepreneurial journey, from building e-commerce and food delivery giants to creating Flash Coffee and now Kata, with a focus on democratizing technology for offline businesses.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. David Brunier’s Entrepreneurial Path

• Early Start: David began his entrepreneurial career straight after university, launching a premium wine e-commerce business.
• Scaling Food Delivery: He joined the founding team at Foodora, expanding to over ten markets in the first year before selling to Delivery Hero ([01:14]).
• Move to Asia: David relocated to Singapore to lead APAC growth and marketing for Delivery Hero and Foodpanda.
• Flash Coffee: Co-founded a fully digitalized coffee chain operating across Asia-Pacific, which later became the technological foundation for Kata.

Quote:

“I was one of those people who didn’t really love university … I really wanted to get into business and started my first company already out of university.”
– David Brunier ([01:14])

2. Recognizing the Technology Gap in Offline Retail & F&B

• Customer Expectations: Modern consumers expect seamless, digital-first experiences even for everyday retail and food orders.
• Industry Lag: Despite consumer demand, retail and F&B have fallen behind in tech compared to sectors like e-commerce.

Insight:

Many large F&B groups struggled to build high-quality consumer apps and sought ready-made solutions, often approaching Flash Coffee for its superior technology ([03:32]).

3. Genesis of Kata

• Bottleneck: No satisfactory SaaS providers for branded consumer apps existed when Flash Coffee sought them.
• In-House Innovation: Flash Coffee developed its own robust tech stack, hiring 120+ engineers and full teams to build superior consumer apps.
• Validation: Industry players repeatedly tried to license or buy Flash Coffee’s tech, highlighting a widespread need for sophisticated, easy-to-implement solutions.
• Company Pivot: David and his co-founders founded Kata to turn their tech into a scalable product for other businesses, acquiring all relevant IP and team members ([04:40]).

Quote:

“That day I realized, oh wow, there’s really something in for it if we’re able to provide other players with this tech so they can grow.”
– David Brunier ([04:00])

4. Solving Industry Pain Points

• High Traditional Costs: Building solid consumer apps in-house or through agencies often takes a year and up to a million dollars, with disappointing results that can damage a brand ([05:53]).
• Kata’s Model: Fast deployment, no upfront charges, alignment with client growth through transaction fees, and ongoing partnership and support.

Quote:

“Either you have a really good app or you have a not so good app, and there’s really not so much in between.”
– David Brunier ([05:53])

5. Kata in Action: Case Study of Guzman y Gomez

• Key Client: Kata’s first major rollout was for Guzman y Gomez, a fast-growing, publicly-listed company.
• Results: The app quickly achieved top positions on Singapore’s App Store, with exceptionally high transaction numbers (exact figures undisclosed) ([06:23]).

Quote:

“Already in the first few weeks have hit number one spot on the App Store frequently. And we’re very, very proud of it.”
– David Brunier ([06:23])

6. Expanding Horizons and Future Vision

• Beyond Singapore: Kata is now working with brands outside Singapore and even outside the region.
• Broader Ambition: Plans to extend beyond F&B into services, grocery, and specialty retail—transforming any offline business into a digital-first player.
• Tech Focus: Active development of AI features and advanced payment automation to drive partner growth ([08:35]).

Quote:

“It’s all about empowering our partners, and that goes way beyond just providing them with an app or an app infrastructure. It’s really about helping them grow.”
– David Brunier ([08:57])

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Memorable Moments & Takeaways

• Movie-Like Negotiation: David recalls a CEO of a major food chain flying into Singapore, asking him to “write down a number on a piece of paper” to buy the tech, underscoring the industry’s desperation for digital solutions ([03:50]).
• Risk-Sharing Model: Kata’s commitment to share risk and only profit if clients grow sets it apart from traditional SaaS and agency approaches.
• Vision for Digital Transformation: David is passionate about making digital growth accessible to businesses of all sizes, not just large brands with tech resources.

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Timeline of Notable Segments

| Timestamp | Topic / Quote | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:14 | David’s early ventures and growth of Foodora | | 03:32 | Realization of industry demand for ready-built consumer app tech | | 04:40 | Transition from Flash Coffee to Kata, acquiring team and IP | | 05:53 | High costs and pitfalls of DIY or agency-built consumer apps | | 06:23 | Success story: Guzman y Gomez app launch results in Singapore | | 07:46 | Kata’s focus on new markets and expanded partners | | 08:57 | Vision for AI and automation to empower partners beyond just an app |

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Concluding Thought

David Brunier and Kata are leading a shift in how offline industries adopt technology, transforming costly, risky IT projects into agile partnerships that are accessible to all. Their journey epitomizes how entrepreneurial insight and deep industry experience can drive sector-wide innovation.

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For more on Kata and its mission, visit kata.sg.

Transcript

[Tom Edwards]

Foreign.

You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio. Brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs. The show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Tom Edwards.

Eureka.

David Brunier is the founder and CEO of Kata, a next generation SARS platform based in Singapore that enables restaurants and retailers to launch fully branded consumer apps in just days with no coding required and minimal upfront costs. Previously David co founded Flash Coffee, one of Asia's fastest growing coffee chains which he scaled to over 200 outlets across multiple markets. He now supports that company as a shareholder and advisor as well as leading Qatar on its journey to help businesses of all sizes unlock new opportunities and accelerate growth. So how do you turn offline industries into technology driven growth engines? Well, here is David with more on how the journey began.

[David Brunier]

I started my entrepreneurial journey quite early. I was one of these people who didn't really love university or I mean while the time was great there I felt that I really want to get into business and started my first company already out of university back then a small e commerce business selling premium wines and then just after my graduation was part of building Foodora which is a food delivery company that we grew quite quickly together with Rocket Infinite. I think we probably scaled to 1012 markets first year and sold the company to Delivery Hero which is a big food delivery player globally nowadays. I was working from Berlin with Delivery Hero back then and I moved to Singapore. It's also where I'm based at now to take over growth and marketing related things as a CMO for Delivery Hero, APAC for a brand called Skipanda which is also a big food delivery player here, one of the leading players in Asia and then started a business completely from scratch together with Rocket Internet back then called Flash Coffee, a fully digitalized coffee chain which operated in many markets here across Asia Pacific before starting Kafka. And yeah, that's basically how it all started. When we booked Flash Coffee a few years back we essentially built two different companies in one which we realized only a little bit later. But the whole thing evolved from building a brick and mortar business to understanding that customers nowadays really love and even expect digital experiences in their day to day purchasing of anything. Right? And you can probably relate everything nowadays digitalized, we're using our phone to essentially do everything in our lives but somehow retail is lagging behind and we understood that very early and said let's go out there, build a fantastic consumer app for our customers to order through and have better POS systems and have just full on tech enablement to grow the business more quickly. But sobering realization was that when we looked out for software as a service provider, basically a company that could help us build our own app or just give us one, we didn't even find a bad provider, we found none. And so long story short, we ended up building a product in house. We hired more than 120 engineers, plus product teams, business intelligence teams, I think around 150 people full time just to build the best consumer product when it comes to technology that FNB has seen. But back then that was for our own sake. It was very selfish and we wanted to simply increase our revenues, improve our bottom line and essentially give our customers a much better experience. But over time there were lots of big group CEOs from I think very, very well known FNB players knocking on our doors. And I remember this one day there was a group CEO flying into Singapore and we're talking a chain with a few thousand outlets, a really kind of a larger scale FMB chain. And it was like in the movies, he, he told me, hey David, write down a number on a piece of paper, hand it over to me and that's what we're going to pay for your technology. We're really good in providing our products, we're probably market leaders in that, but we just can't figure out technology. And I heard that over and over again that people are really good in, in their respective space. So I don't know, they're great in baking pizzas or great in doing their sushi or their coffee or whatever it is, but naturally they are not leading when it comes to building AAA grade tech products. And so that day I realized, oh wow, there's really something in for it if we're able to provide other players with this tech so they can grow. That happens so many times. People asking for licenses, people asking to even buy the whole tech stack and so on. So roughly a year ago my co founders I we decided to built kata to really support other players in their growth. We acquired Flash Copies technology, the ip, the tech team, everything added a few additional people and I would say built one of the most fantastic tech stacks out there when it comes to consumer apps. So I think the typical journey for a restaurant chain owner, a QSR operator would be the realization, number one, customers require us and asking us to have an app, a loyalty program and whatever it entails. And then you're thinking about your option. Option one would be hey, I'm building an in house team, I'm recruiting all of these People, I'm suddenly managing a roadmap. I have to deal with servers and maintenance and feature sets that are ever evolving, prioritization of that, etc.

[Tom Edwards]

And.

[David Brunier]

And that's going to cost you millions. Because the problem is it's very black and white when it comes to consumer perception. Either you have a really good app or you have a not so good app, and there's really not so much in between. So what happens to a lot of players out there is that they're trying to build it themselves or even they're going to an agency, which is the second option, and they put down, let's say, a million dollars, and then you wait for a year until it's built and you launch a minimum viable product. But customers end up hating it because it's not at the kind of feature set that a Grab Food would have, a Food Panda would have, eats would have. But that's the customer expectation. But now the problem is you've just put down a million dollars, you just waited for a year to launch this, you put in marketing money, and now it's really hard to roll it back. And what we're solving here is that we're saying we're not charging any upfront money. We are really kind of entrepreneurial about it. We absorb the risk, we launch it with our partners. We see this as a partnership, not as a please sign a you never hear from us again kind of thing. And we only grow if our partners grow. So basically through transaction fees, et cetera, where we just make sure that our team is fully aligned on incentives and wants our partners to grow. We have just launched our first partner. Officially, they're called Guzmani Gomez. It's a publicly listed company. Amazing company, growing very, very quickly. They've just rolled it out in Singapore and already in the first few weeks have hit number one spot on the App Store frequently. And we're very, very proud of it. So while I can't disclose the exact numbers of people using it, it's really mind blowing how successful the app is right now and how many customers have chosen to transact through the app and the overall KATA platform, which is more than just an app, you have also a few other channels. But it's really, really nice to see.

[Tom Edwards]

That.

[David Brunier]

Now it's really about launching all these other brands that we're very lucky that they're with us. And we have some really cool ones coming up. A lot of local heroes here in Singapore. We've actually also started doing business outside of of Singapore, even outside of this region, but there are really lots of leading brands out there that we're very proud of that have chosen to work with kata. So now it's all about launching those properly and we're advising them right now on launch strategies, etc. And I think that's. That has to be focused for us, so finding as many amazing players out there that that we can work with. We're obviously focusing a lot on FMB right now, but customers have been transacting with FMB businesses just like they have with other offline businesses in the past. So what we're looking at is booking services. What we're looking at is grocery stores, specialty retail stores, anything that's currently being ordered offline. Our idea is to fully transform that into digital players and enabling these players to grow like E commerce businesses would. And so there's really lots of work on our. We're working a lot on AI features right now, which I think are going to be very exciting. So lots of automation happening and I think lots of things on payment. It's all about empowering our partners and that goes way beyond just providing them with an app or an app infrastructure. It's really about helping them grow. So I think us being partners for growth for these amazing merchants is going to unlock a lot of value in the future for them.

[Tom Edwards]

That was David Brunier, the founder and CEO of kata. And you can learn more about the vision by heading to KATA sg. And that's all for this episode of Eureka. We'll be back at the same time next week. The program's produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. Listen again and find out [e-mail] or follow us at wherever you get your audio. If you'd like to get in touch with the team, email Laura on lrk at monocle. Com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye and thanks for listening to Eureka.