The hot news of this month includes two large acquisitions, one of them made by DoorDash. In a €7B all-stock transaction, the Finish technology company Wolt, known for its delivery platform, is acquired by DoorDash. As Wolts CEO Miki Kuusi states in the blog article: "All shareholders, whether investors or employees, will continue as shareholders of DoorDash. For us, this means that we will continue our journey both as Wolt and as a part of DoorDash, with me looking after our combined international operations." The overarching goal of both companies is to become a global leader in their industry.
But DoorDash isn't the only company to acquire its rivals, to further strengthen its standing in the highly competitive instant (grocery) delivery market. Getir announced that it will buy the British startup Weezy for an undisclosed amount to expand into the U.K. By joining their workforces, Getir now counts more than 4.000 employees globally.
🤝 Wolt joins forces with DoorDash
📝 10-minute grocery delivery start-up Getir to buy UK rival Weezy
New funding rounds in the delivery world are announced almost daily as the number of competitors continues to grow. In Egypt, the grocery delivery company Breadfast is "trying to build Gopuff for Africa and the Middle East" and just secured $26M to fund their plans. Another startup in the region, Cairo-based Rabbit, raised $11M and is "the first notable player that is building its business from scratch around the promise of 20-minute delivery of groceries." But not every startup is following the classic model, a few are trying to stick out with their offer. One of them is MilkRun, which raised $6M in a Series A Financing. They provide "a subscription service delivering weekly grocery staples sourced from small, local farms". Multicultural groceries are provided by berlin-based delivery startup Yababa. They just started operating this summer, with a focus on Turkish and Arabic foods and now closed a $15.5M seed round. “We want to make it simple and fun to live sustainably” is the goal of Motatas, a company offering food waste deliveries. By raising €24M, they want to further expand their business of saving and selling excess or almost expired food that would otherwise end up in a landfill.
💵 Egypt’s Breadfast wants to build ‘Gopuff for Africa and Middle East’, gets $26M backing
💰 Egyptian 20-minute grocery delivery startup Rabbit raises $11 million
💸 MilkRun lands new capital to deliver farm-fresh groceries
💲 Yababa snags $15.5M to scale a multicultural grocery delivery biz across Europe
💶 Motatos raises €24m to expand its discount food waste deliveries to new markets
The fight for market shares in the delivery world is still going strong. Deliveroo now partners with food company Picard Groupe SAS to provide countrywide express deliveries in France. They also plan to launch Hop, their instant grocery delivery service, in France as well as in Hong Kong and Italy. Across the pond, Getir makes their US debut in Chicago, with cities like New York and Boston next in line. They plan to launch at least in 300 cities as soon as possible, in a market currently dominated by GoPuff. DoorDash is currently in the process of launching in Germany to grow and build its market share in Europe. Stuttgart will be the first city because of its "extremely diverse gastronomic scene," which DoorDash wants to strengthen, as CTO Andy Fang explains.
🇫🇷 Deliveroo Expands in France With Picard Rapid Grocery Delivery
🇺🇸 Ultrafast delivery firm Getir makes US debut in Chicago
🇩🇪 DoorDash Arrives in Europe With German Launch
Researching the current delivery market is essential to gain a better understanding of how the industry is going to transform over the next few years. A report by Coresight Research "examines the booming quick-commerce retail space and explores the differences between third-party delivery platforms and vertically integrated instant-needs companies". They also take a look at the key competitors in the US Quick Commerce sector. One of them is the instant grocery delivery startup Buyk. In a recent PYMNTS article, their CEO Slava Bocharov shares his perspective on the competitive market and why he thinks the current situation is unsustainable. How consumers think about the growing fast delivery options is evaluated in a consumer survey by Pitney Boews. "How fast is fast enough?" and "How important is it to have a product delivered ultra-fast?" are some of the crucial questions to ask to shape a possible future of the market.
🔎 From Quick Commerce to Instant Needs: Exploring Business Models in Rapid Delivery
⏱️ Ultra-Fast Grocery Delivery Companies Expect a Future of Consolidation
📦 Same Day Delivery Expectations
"Delivery robots – just a few years ago, the stuff of pure science fiction – are now very much a reality and quickly becoming a part of everyday life for many of us." Bernhard Marr explores the future of autonomous delivery robots in his latest Forbes article. He speaks to the CEO of Starship, a delivery robot company, who shares some interesting facts and figures about their last-mile solution. Tangible plans for grocery deliveries via autonomous delivery robots were made in Dubai at the World Congress and Challenge for Self-Driving Transport. Three agreements were signed, one of them between Careem and Kiwibot, to develop food and grocery delivery robots. But the grocery delivery of the future is not only limited to the ground. As stated in a The Verge article, "Walmart and drone delivery company Zipline are launching a delivery service in Pea Ridge, Arkansas — the first commercial drone delivery service offered by Zipline in the US." Enjoy these articles, and don't hesitate to get in touch with any questions.
🦾 The Future Of Delivery Robots
🤖 Your future Careem and Carrefour orders will be home-delivered by robots
🚁 Zipline starts first commercial US drone deliveries with Walmart partnership in Arkansas
