Barcelona-based Glovo, one of the world’s fastest growing delivery players, has just raised a €150 million Series D funding round led by the international venture capital firm Lakestar. This comes after the startup raised a €115 million Series C round last July.
The startup, which delivers everything from food, to gifts and pharmaceutical items, will use this capital injection to bolster its growth, scaling its team of engineers and expanding on-demand innovations to become the everything app for city living.
Founded in January 2015 by Oscar Pierre and Sacha Michaud, Glovo’s growth has been rapid, launching in a new city every four days on average last year. Glovo now employs over 1,000 people and is quickly becoming the fastest growing delivery player in Latin America and EMEA.
The round was led by Lakestar and Drake, along with new investors Idinvest Partners, and Korelya Capital.
In order to become the everything app for cities and meet growing demand, Glovo will also invest heavily in growing delivery categories beyond food, including laundry, alcohol, pharmacy products and groceries. 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. This round of investment will fuel the expansion of these supermarkets across priority markets, and help Glovo deliver a superior experience to customers worldwide.
Glovo will also be focusing on its new project – Cook Room – customer free spaces specifically designed to help partners cater to orders in an efficient way. Glovo has opened up Cook Rooms in cities in Spain with aspirations to expand these dark kitchens globally.
“Glovo continues to scale rapidly and we have big ambitions for this round of investment,” said Oscar Pierre, Co-founder and CEO of Glovo. 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.”
“We are excited to invest behind Oscar and the Glovo team,” added Dharmash Mistry, Partner at Lakestar, who will be joining the Glovo board. “In only 3 years they have built a significant, multi country, next generation, branded last mile express delivery company. The bold ambition to deliver ‘anything anywhere’ in less than 30 minutes will continue to change consumer behaviour around food and grocery delivery, and much beyond.”
Last year Glovo raised $134 million in Series C from Seaya Ventures, Cathay Innovation and Rakuten Capital, and the company has now raised €285 million to date.
