[NEWS] Glovo, the on-demand ‘deliver anything’ local app, raises $169M Series D – Loganspace

Glovo, the Spain-headquartered on-keep a query to produce app that is similar to Postmates in the U.S., has raised $169 million (€150m) in Series D funding. Lakestar led the round alongside Drake, owner of world pizza franchise Papa John’s.

Idinvest Partners and Korelya Capital furthermore participated, bringing total raised to approximately $322 million. The firm final raised funding ten months prior to now:a $134 million Series C roundfrom Seaya Ventures, Cathay Innovation and Rakuten Capital.

Based in January 2015 by Oscar Pierre and Sacha Michaud, Glovo affords a ‘shop to your behalf’ app that promises to permit you to insist anything else regionally on-keep a query to and hang it delivered “inner minutes”. This entails food objects — the firm is identified for its McDonald’s deliveries in Spain — and non-takeout food and varied verticals, corresponding to groceries and pharmaceuticals.

The rapidly-growing firm claims more than 5.5 million fresh users and 16,000 connected partners, and now operates in 124 cities all over 21 countries, including EEMEA, LATAM, and most recently in Sub Saharian Africa.

The startup says it at this time employs over 1,000 folks globally, with over 400 folks in its Barcelona HQ. A basic gig employee setup: Glovo has 35,000 active “Glovers” on its platform (that’s “self-employed” couriers, to you and me).

Glovo says this is in a position to doubtless well perhaps insist this injection of funding to bolster world enhance, which has been dramatically picking up tempo (though, with some reportedbumpsin the avenue). CEO Oscar Pierre tells me the firm launched in 18 fresh countries in 2018. There are furthermore plans to additional innovate around on-keep a query to groceries, including constructing “murky supermarkets” that characteristic alongside the app’s market of local grocery store chains.

Explains Pierre: “Our Darkstores are urban micro-fulfillment centers situated in central areas of a metropolis. They permit us to absolutely adjust the worth chain and offer the one UX, with a supply of around 20 minutes. They’re bustle 24 hours a day by Glovo workers whose characteristic is to internet and pack buyer orders and hang them ready for when the courier arrives. We hang launched the offering in Barcelona and Madrid to this level and we’re serene learning and examining the results”.

Besides, Glovo will proceed to throw more engineers and know-how at the wretchedness of optimising on-keep a query to produce. The firm recently employed VP of engineering Mustafa Sezgin, who modified into an engineering leader at Uber sooner than becoming a member of.

Pierre says tech is being developed to proceed bettering the efficiency of Glovo’s “supply and dispatching capabilities to constructing an global-class cell product that exposes all the pieces in a metropolis at the creep of a button”. To support this, he intends to develop the tech and records team of workers to over 300 engineers in the next 18 months.

“At the present time, more than 70 percent of our enterprise is food, adopted by groceries, courier and pharmacy,” adds Pierre. “Our imaginative and prescient is to manufacture all the pieces in a metropolis straight away readily available during the app, and we’re looking for to lift into varied areas previous supply (services, reservations, and so forth) rapidly”.

Meanwhile, I’m educated Glovo’s most winning markets through orders are Spain (Madrid & Barcelona), Argentina (Buenos Aires), Peru (Lima) and Italy (Milan). Its most winning markets through enhance final month (ie fresh buyer acquisition) launch air of the above had been Costa Rica (San José), Guayaquil (Ecuador), Ukraine (Kiev), Turkey (Istanbul) and Romania (Bucharest).