The express home grocery delivery industry continues to attract funds. German start-up Flink announced on Friday that it had raised $ 750 million from several investors, valuing it $ 2.1 billion after just seven months of existence. Its German competitor, Gorillas, had already raised $ 1 billion last October. Since the start of the year, money has been flowing in this sector which has undertaken to bypass the players in traditional food distribution. No less than twenty fundraisers have been identified by the Bryan Garnier bank since the start of the year, or more than $ 6 billion cumulative!
Flink, Gorillas, Cajoo, Getir, Dija or Yango Deli, which launched in France since the spring, make the same promise to customers: deliver groceries in less than 15 minutes.
They offer them a reduced assortment, a little less extensive than that of a convenience store.
To meet their deadlines, these players mesh cities with “dark stores”, mini-markets closed to the public and optimized for order preparation.
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Like platforms such as Uber or Deliveroo, these players rely on a very efficient application.
But they are not only intermediaries: they are also traders like the others, who buy and resell products, as well as specialists of the last mile.
To deliver in such a short time, their staff is at least temporary, and in the best case employee on CDI.
Agreements with traditional distributors
At Flink as with its competitors, the funds raised are used to win new customers. They are used to densify and deploy “dark store” networks, and to invest in advertising, promotions and prices. The number of players in this currently very competitive market is set to decrease. Only those who have conquered the most market share will remain on the finish line.
The prospects for this sector, boosted by the growing use of food e-commerce customers, are not only attracting the interest of investment funds.
Meal delivery players see it as a promising diversification of their business.
The American Doordash appears in Flink's last round.
The start-up has just announced that it is launching itself in the delivery of groceries in New York, where it has just opened its first “dark store”.
Delivery Hero, champion of meal delivery in Germany, has for its part invested in Gorillas.
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Traditional distributors, whose convenience stores are directly threatened by these new entrants, have also decided to join them. In France, Carrefour acquired a stake in Cajoo, while Casino entered into a strategic partnership with Gorillas. The latter partnered with Tesco in Great Britain. Flink has had German distributor Rewe in its capital since spring. Such participations allow the giants of the food distribution "
to gain a foothold in this market at a time when it is being built.
», Explains one of them.
Quick commerce players, for their part, benefit from the strike force of traditional purchasing distributors, and from their expertise in the range offered.
Gorillas, for example, now offers its own brand products Monoprix and Franprix.
An asset to attract customers outside of aperitif hours.
