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Pulls away:
10-minute delivery service Flink started after Gorillas, and is now the market leader in Germany
Photo: - / dpa
The 10-minute delivery service Flink has raised $ 560 million in fresh capital for expansion.
The manager magazin learned this from company circles.
The valuation of the Berlin start-up, which was only founded at the end of last year, has risen to almost 2.7 billion dollars after the financing round.
The exact amount of the financing round and the valuation were not yet known.
This means that CEO
Oliver Merkel
(45) and his co-founders
Julian Dames
(33) and
Christoph Cordes
(42) are now well equipped for the arms race of delivery services.
The main rivals in Germany are gorillas.
Unlike the British pioneer Ocado, they have not yet made any operational profits.
As early as September, the manager magazin reported in September that the US delivery service DoorDash was joining Flink.
The mega start-up from San Francisco is pumping 400 million dollars into Flink and now holds just under 15 percent of the shares.
Another 160 million dollars will come from previous investors, including the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala Capital-Ventures, and Bond Capital.
Rewe also continues to invest in the express delivery service. The supermarket chain now holds a good 5 percent in Flink. Rewe originally supplied the nimble rival Gorillas. But in June Rewe had changed sides and joined Flink. The retailer sees the express delivery service as a supplement to its own delivery service, which brought in half a billion euros last year.
Flink started at the end of last year after rival Gorillas.
But in the meantime the service has overtaken the Berlin competitor.
According to data from the Airnow Data platform, Flink is now used more frequently than gorillas in Germany and the app is also downloaded more often on smartphones.
Delivery Hero CEO
Niklas Östberg
(41)
predicted this development back in July
.
Nevertheless, he later invests in gorillas himself.
jr