Hong Kong-based pet food brand Buddy Bites has closed a $4.2 million Series A round led by Digitalis Ventures, with participation from Hong Kong venture investor Adrian Lai.
It is the New York-headquartered animal health investor’s first bet on an Asia-based pet food company, and it lands at a moment when Digitalis has mostly stuck close to home, with its activity outside the US concentrated in Zurich and the UK rather than Hong Kong or Singapore.
Buddy Bites was founded in 2020 by Ryan Black and Chris Lee, both British and both transplants to Hong Kong well before they went into business together. Black grew up in Edinburgh and moved to the city in 2013 after a friend helped him land a recruitment job over Christmas drinks, while Lee rew up in Cheshire and went through school and university in Manchester before making his own move east.
The two had known each other for years, playing rugby together at the Hong Kong Football Club, before the idea for Buddy Bites came together over dinner at Lee’s flat, where Black noticed 20 kilograms of dog food stacked in the corner and asked why Lee had picked that particular brand. Neither of them could really answer the question, and that gap became the business.
The company runs on subscriptions, tied to a donation pledge: for every two kilograms of food sold, Buddy Bites gives away one kilogram to dog shelters. All three of the founders’ own dogs are rescues from Catherine’s Puppies, the Hong Kong shelter that became the first donation partner in a program that has grown into a logistics operation on its own, moving more than 20 tonnes of food a month.
Over the past year Buddy Bites donated more than 188 tonnes, representing close to 3.7 million meals, to shelters in Hong Kong and Singapore. The give-back model has since extended into the UK as well.
Buddy Bites’ recipes are manufactured in Europe and formulated with Hong Kong vets, built to meet the standards set by the Association of American Feed Control Officials.
The startup’s success, however, is not rooted in institutional capital. Buddy Bites has passed $6 million USD (€5.2 million) in annual recurring revenue, 85.9% of it subscription-based, and added 10,000 customers in the past twelve months for 68% year-over-year growth before this raise.
“This is a big moment for Buddy Bites and for premium pet nutrition in Asia,” said Ryan Black, co-Founder and CEO. “Digitalis is perhaps the most experienced investor in the space. They’re betting on a category we believe is about to take off, and on a brand built to give back in the process.”
Ben Jacobs, partner at Digitalis Ventures, put the bet down to discipline more than timing. “Ryan and Chris have built exactly the kind of business we look for: disciplined, subscription-first, and growing fast with real customer loyalty behind it,” he said.
“Pet ownership and premium nutrition demand are accelerating across Asia, and Buddy Bites is as well positioned as any team we’ve seen to lead that shift.”
The funding is going toward the dog food line first, plus the shelter program tied to it. Two other bets sit alongside that; Buddy Bites launched into cat food in June 2026, its first new category in five years, and has already signed up more than 2,000 cats across Hong Kong and Singapore.
The company expects the line to hit $1 million in annual recurring revenue within six months. Later this year it plans to launch a shelf-stable fresh dog food product.
Chris Lee, co-founder and COO, framed both moves around what the company sees in its own customer data. “We are very fortunate to be able to see a lot of data on our customers, and what consumer sentiment looks like,” he said.
“We continue to see both humanisation and convenience being high priorities for pet parents in our markets, and we believe in shelf stable fresh we have a product perfect for pet parents in the region.”
A Taiwan launch is next on the map. Whether more European investors follow Digitalis into the region remains to be seen, but the deal, and the founders’ own path from Edinburgh and Cheshire to Hong Kong, is a reminder that the line between European and Asian pet care markets is thinner than the funding numbers alone suggest.
Featured image: Courtesy of Buddy Bites
Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.
