Hi, I'm Andrew. Founder and operator, based in Dubai. Right now I'm building Valetcart — an AI company making automated online shopping carts for grocery retailers. Headquartered at DIFC Innovation Hub, working with retailers across MENA and Europe.

Before this, I was CPO at Martistel, a Dubai robotics startup building warehouse automation for FMCG and e-commerce. Launched the brand, led the product debut at MODEX '24 in Atlanta, and secured pilots with two major regional enterprises — a leading MENA food-delivery platform and a global ports and logistics operator.

Before Dubai, ten years running Artutkin, a digital agency I founded in Moscow. Grew it to $2.7M revenue, mostly working at the intersection of AI, big data, and online sales for banks and insurers. The work I'm proudest of: a real-time personalization platform that added $6M in digital revenue in its first month at a top-5 insurer, and a portfolio-rebalancing system that grew net profit in a major bank's online VIP segment by $45M in a year.

Earlier, co-founded autocommunity.ru, an early Russian e-commerce startup, and before that ran B2B sales in the Moscow telecoms sector.

Dubai is home. I came here to build.

Investment Opportunity: Valetcart — Automated Online Shopping Carts for Grocery Retailers

Valetcart is seeking $1.5M in pre-seed funding to take 4 grocery retailers from free pilot to live revenue across MENA and Europe — on the path to $6.6M projected ARR in 18 months.

The Problem:
Globally, 500+ supermarket chains lose a combined $84B a year on online orders.
Shoppers build little baskets too often — each one costs more to pick, pack, and deliver than the profit it brings in.
Delivery apps now own the shopper, the app, and the shelf — taking a bigger bite every year.

Our Solution:
Valetcart is software that lives inside the retailer's systems and pre-builds every shopper's weekly cart — ready to check out before they open the app.
It learns the retailer's catalog, prices, stock, and rules — plus every shopper's habits, allergies, and what they keep forgetting.
Swaps out-of-stock items for better-fit, higher-margin alternatives. Nudges shoppers toward fewer, bigger orders.
Result: +15% basket value, +2–3% margin, -40% delivery cost — 65% more profit per order, simulated on a European retailer's full 2025 sales history.

Market Opportunity:
TAM: $2.6B (every grocery retailer with an online channel, worldwide).
SAM: $1.5B (retailers who sell online but can't build this themselves).
SOM: $238M across 47 named chains in MENA and Europe — scored and priced one by one.

Business Model:
1% commission on every order we help build.
~96% gross margin.
For every $1 the retailer pays us, they keep $2.25.

Traction:
65% profit lift simulated on a European retailer's full 2025 sales history — every number traces back to a real order.
MVP ready. $170k bootstrapped.
Setup takes 3–4 weeks. Retailers already have all the data we need — they use it via API for their own websites and apps.
DIFC licensed and operational in Dubai.
16 Priority Pilot targets identified — multiple in active founder-led talks across MENA and Europe.
MENA: 500+ contacts inside top retailers, growing 30+ every week. Europe: 800+ retail execs in our CIO's network.

Competitive Edge:
Build-it-yourself approaches (Rufus, Sparky) take 1–2 years and tens of millions — only Amazon and Walmart have pulled it off.
Recommender engines (Dynamic Yield, Bloomreach) show widgets; they don't build carts.
Valetcart is the only software that builds the cart, lifts the profit, and keeps every retailer's data at home.

The Team:
Four co-founders with deep retail, AI, and enterprise-sales experience. Real work shipped at Metro, REWE, Sodexo, Allianz, Société Générale, Flaschenpost, and more.

Andrew Kalibabin, CEO — 20+ years building tech startups; former CPO at a Dubai robotics startup for FMCG.
Dr. Vladimir Rubin, CIO — 25+ years building data systems for European retailers; owns a German engineering firm bringing senior architects to the pilot team.
Alexey Arustamov, CAIO — 25+ years in AI and analytics; owns a data engineering firm; 100+ AI projects shipped across retail, fintech, and healthcare.
Andrey Kenig, CSO — 25 years inside Fortune 500 companies as a strategy and risk advisor.

Funding Ask:
$1.5M pre-seed.
50% — Landing the pilots (sales, engineering, integration).
23% — R&D (cross-retailer IP with each new pilot).
27% — G&A (DIFC operations, legal, finance, runway).

What it unlocks:
4 pilots live, all converted to revenue — 3 MENA, 1 Europe.
$6.6M projected ARR by month 18.
43 more named retailers behind them, ready to scale.

Happy to walk interested investors through the full financial model, the live retailer conversations, and how the 65% lift was simulated. Reach out to Andrew Kalibabin at a.kalibabin@valetcart.ae.