Buddy Bites has closed a $4.2 million Series A led by Digitalis Ventures, with Hong Kong angel investor Adrian Lai also putting money in. It’s the first time Digitalis, an animal health and life sciences investor, has backed a pet food company in Asia.
For Buddy Bites, it’s the first Series A the company has raised, coming after an earlier $1 million seed check from Mars Petcare’s Leap Venture Studio accelerator in 2025.
Ryan Black and Chris Lee started the company in Hong Kong in 2020. The model is subscriptions, and it comes wrapped around a donation pledge: for every two kilograms of pet food sold, Buddy Bites gives away one kilogram to dog shelters.
The three dogs the founders own between them are all rescues from Catherine’s Puppies, the shelter that became their first donation partner. The pledge has since outgrown a side project; Buddy Bites is now moving over 20 tonnes of donated food a month. Last year’s total came to more than 188 tonnes, which the company estimates at 3.7 million meals, spread across shelters in Hong Kong and Singapore.
What’s more, annual recurring revenue is past $6 million, and subscriptions make up 85.9% of it. The company says it picked up 10,000 new customers over the past year, which works out to 68% growth year over year.
Ryan Black, co-founder and CEO, framed the round as validation for the region more broadly. “Digitalis is perhaps the most experienced investor in the space,” he said. “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, said the appeal was in how the business was run, not just how fast it grew.
“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.”
Three things happen next with the money. Buddy Bites keeps building out its dog food line, which already spans air-dried, wet and dry formats, and keeps the shelter program running alongside it.
Then there’s cat food. Buddy Bites spent five years as a dog-only brand before launching a cat line in June 2026, and more than 2,000 cats have tried it so far across Hong Kong and Singapore. The company is targeting $1 million in annual recurring revenue from that line within six months. A shelf-stable fresh dog food product is also coming later this year.
“We are very fortunate to be able to see a lot of data on our customers, and what consumer sentiment looks like,” said Chris Lee, co-founder and COO. “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.”
Taiwan is next on the map after that.
The round is a useful marker of something bigger: specialist Western investors are starting to go looking for growth in Asian pet care, rather than waiting for Asian brands to come find them.
Featured image: courtesy of Buddy Bites
Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.
