Glovo, the Spanish on-demand delivery startup that is shutting down its operations in Egypt (and Chile) today, has just announced closing of its $169 million (€150 million) Series D led by European VC fund Lakestar and Drake, the franchise group that owns Papa John’s (American Pizza restaurant franchise). The timing of the announcement is very interesting and suggests that Glovo for some reason needed to announce its departure from Egypt and Chile before announcing the round.
The Barcelona-headquartered had raised its $134 million Series C less than a year ago. This latest round takes total capital raised so far by Glovo to over $320 million.
It is not clear if Delivery Hero that according to its 2018 annual report owns a 16% stake in the company has joined this round or not.
The startup still remains active in one MENA market; Morocco; where it expanded last year and now offers its services in Casablanca, Marrakech, and Rabat. Glovo had plans to expand into some other markets of the region when it announced its Egypt expansion last year. it will be interesting to see if the company moves forward with those plans after its exit from Egypt.
Founded in early 2015 by Oscar Pierre and Sacha Michaud, Glovo has been launching its services in a new city every four days on average last year, according to a statement by the company. The startup plans to use the latest investment to grow delivery categories beyond food including laundry, alcohol, pharmacy products and groceries to become the everything app for cities.
“To accelerate the growth of these categories further, the startup is investing in it groceries vertical, building dark supermarkets that will enable groceries to be delivered to customers within 20 minutes of placing the order. The stores stock up to 1,000 items for Glovers to collect for customers in Barcelona and Madrid,” said Glovo in a statement.
Oscar Pierre, co-founder and CEO of Glovo, commenting on the occasion, said, “Glovo continues to scale rapidly and we have big ambitions for this round of investment,” said Our main priority is to invest in our people – our team have been fundamental to our success to date and as we grow we need an even bigger team of engineers to meet the demand we’re experiencing.”
“Our aim is to lead in every market we enter and provide an on-demand experience that delivers for our customers, Glovers and partners. We believe innovations such as dark supermarkets, as well as our appetite to innovate to provide everything through one app for city dwellers, gives us a significant competitive advantage in the market for the year ahead,” he added.
