Glovo, one of the most relevant and fastest growing companies in the delivery sector in the world, led by Óscar Pierre and with investment from important Spanish investors such as Seaya Ventures, Bonsai or Antai Venture Builder or business Angels such as Hugo Arévalo, Félix Ruiz, Bernardo Hernández or David Tomás, today announced a Series D financing round of 150 million Euro ($169M) led by the venture capital firm, Lakestar.
The Barcelona-based company that delivers everything from food to supermarket products will use this funding to bolster its global growth. Glovo will focus on expanding its team of engineers and expanding new innovative projects such as SuperGlovo with the goal of becoming the application that delivers anything you need from your city.
The growth of the company, founded in January 2015 by Oscar Pierre and Sacha Michaud, has been made possible by venture capital investments. In the last year, on average Glovo has started to operate in a new city every four days. Today it has more than 1,000 employees and is fast becoming the most important delivery company in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
MORE THAN 285 MILLION IN INVESTMENT
The round was led by Lakestar, the venture capital technology company, and Drake, owner of Papa John’s global franchise, with the support of new investors: Idinvest Partners, European private equity and Korelya Capital, the venture capital technology firm, which supports the growth of European startups. Glovo had raised more than €135M thanks to other important investment rounds. The most important was the one held in July 2018 where the company raised €113 million thanks to the contribution of Idinvest Partners, ArmRest, Rakuten Capital, Seaya Ventures and Cathay Innovation. This is a much bigger round than in previous years, led by Rakuten in 2017 (25M€) and 5M€ thanks to the funds Entreé Capital, Seaya Ventures, Antai Venture Builder, Bonsai Venture Capital and Caixa Capital Risc.
As Glovo expands around the world, it is committed to taking its technological capacity to the next level. Following the appointment of Engineering VP Mustafa Sezgin at the end of last year, Glovo is in the process of recruiting 300 new tech engineers to work alongside the former technology leader of Uber and SoundCloud. The startup will use the growth of the tech team to create a better and more efficient user experience, reduce delivery times and help the company operate and be a leader in new markets in Africa, Europe and Latin America.
OSCAR PIERRE’S STATEMENTS
In order to become the app for anything in the city, Glovo will also increase investment in the development and growth of on-demand categories beyond food, such as laundry or supermarket products. To further accelerate the growth of these categories, the startup invests in vertical supermarkets through SuperGlovo; allowing supermarket products to be delivered to customers within about 20 minutes of placing the order.
These stores store up to 1,000 items allowing delivery to Barcelona and Madrid. This investment round will drive the expansion of these supermarkets into priority markets and help Glovo deliver an extraordinary experience to customers around the world.
Glovo will also focus on its new project, Cook Room, customer-free spaces specifically designed to help partners fulfill their orders efficiently. Glovo has opened Cook Room in cities in Spain with aspirations to expand these dark kitchens worldwide.
Oscar Pierre, co-founder and CEO of Glovo, said that “Glovo continues to escalate rapidly and we have great ambitions for this round of investment. Our top priority is to invest in human capital: our team has been critical to our success to date and, as we grow, we need an even larger team of engineers to meet the demand we are experiencing”. The Catalan entrepreneur added that his “goal is to lead each market entered and provide an excellent experience to our users, distributors and establishments. We believe that technological innovations such as dark supermarkets (SuperGlovo), as well as our appetite to innovate to provide everything through an application for city dwellers, gives us a significant competitive advantage in the market for next year”.
Dharmash Mistry, a Lakestar Partner, who will join Glovo’s Board of Directors, added, “I am very happy to invest in Oscar and the Glovo team. In just 3 years they have built a major and recognized home delivery company in multiple countries. The incredible ambition to deliver “anything” in less than 30 minutes will continue to change consumer behavior regarding the delivery of food, supermarket products and much more.