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Delivery service Gorillas is laying off hundreds of employees and downsizing its business

2022-05-24T09:11:03.364Z


The express delivery service Gorillas is separating from around half of its employees at the headquarters. The company wants to concentrate its business in five countries to save costs.


Enlarge image

Gorillas branch in Düsseldorf: boss Sümer wants to become more profitable

Photo: Michael Gstettenbauer / imago images / Michael Gstettenbauer

The fast food delivery services in Germany have been in fierce competition for years.

In this fight, Gorillas has now pulled the ripcord because of skyrocketing costs - and is laying off 300 employees in administration.

Half of the employees working there are affected.

In addition, the Berlin start-up, which was founded just two years ago, announced that all strategic options for business in Italy, Spain, Denmark and Belgium would be examined.

Company boss Kagan Sümer left it open what exactly that means.

»Since October we have tripled our business and ninefold efficiency.

But with a view to the capital markets at the moment, we have to take further steps to pave the way to profitability," said Sümer.

In the meantime, rapid growth is no longer the top priority for Sümer, but the goal of getting into the black: "That's the next milestone.

When we go public, we want to do it as a profitable company.«

860 million euros collected from investors

For a long time, the competition was about expanding into more countries and winning as many customers as possible, who would order as many supermarket items as possible via the app and have them delivered to their homes from the gorillas’ mini-warehouses as quickly as possible.

However, the competition is fierce and in cities like Berlin, Flink, the Doordash subsidiary Wolt and Getir also offer similar services.

Now Gorillas wants to focus on Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and the USA in order to save costs.

According to Sümer, these countries currently account for around 90 percent of the business.

In October, Gorillas collected around 860 million euros from investors in a financing round and was valued at 2.5 billion euros - similar to its competitor Flink, also from Berlin, but significantly less than Getir from Turkey.

At that time, the global food delivery service Delivery Hero came on board as an investor with a capital injection of 200 million euros.

It is unclear how long the money will last, given the high expenses, to secure operations.

Sumer said, "We're here to stay.

We have enough buffers.« But he is also certain: »Risk has become irritating for investors and nobody wants uncertainty at the moment.

That's currently making it pretty difficult to collect money.« That's why the fixed costs have to go down and the Berlin headquarters should become the linchpin.

The approximately 14,000 drivers should not be affected by the announced layoffs.

Apr/Reuters

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2022-05-24

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