The coronavirus pandemic had made online shopping go to the next level. Apart from Amazon and others, there had been an increase in the number of start-ups that have solely opened for the purpose of delivering groceries at your doorsteps. More and more people are getting acquainted with this idea and online grocery shopping had been going on quite well.
When people do not have to go out to shop and they are getting fresh products delivered to them in the comfort and safety of their home, it is becoming an industry that is gathering a lot of capital investment. Millions and billions of dollars have been invested in these online grocery shopping start-up companies.
Venture-backed grocery companies have already raised over $10 billion so far in 2021, according to data from Pitchbook, eclipsing the $7 billion raised by such firms last year.
In the U.S., Instacart was valued at $39 billion in a March funding round, while GoPuff raised funds at an $8.9 billion valuation. Meanwhile, in China, Xingsheng Youxuan raised a whopping $3 billion this year, the largest funding round for a grocery start-up to date.
The craze had spread in Europe too and many new online start-up companies have come up who are touting deliveries in 10-20 minutes: Getir, Gorillas, Weezy, Flink, Zapp, and Dija, to name but a few.
“You saw a lot of players in the U.S. and some players in Europe really struggling pre-pandemic, and then obviously whoever did online grocery during the pandemic was doing well,” Čupr told CNBC.
“Now the question remains: how much of that is going to stick?” he added. “We’re fairly confident because we grew massively pre-pandemic; we think post-pandemic we’ll do the same.”
