Image: Glovo
The company is investing heavily in its ‘q-commerce’ business for retail and supermarket deliveries in several European cities.
Spanish on-demand delivery company Glovo has raised €450m in a Series F round to double down on its operations in existing markets and go beyond food delivery.
The round was led by Lugard Road Capital and Luxor Capital Group, with Delivery Hero, Drake Enterprises and GP Bullhound returning to back the company again.
According to Glovo, the new funds will be invested in expanding its presence in the 20 markets it currently operates in to take advantage of the surge in online delivery demand over the last year.
The company, which has more than 10m users, provides food delivery in competition with the likes of Deliveroo and Uber Eats but also provides grocery and e-commerce deliveries. It hit unicorn status in 2019 after raising $150m in Series E funding.
Since then it has invested heavily in its ‘q-commerce’ business, a network of strategically placed warehouses, or ‘dark stores’, across cities for quick delivery of different goods in minutes. It has partnered with several large retailers and supermarkets such as Carrefour and Kaufland as part of these efforts.
Earlier in the year, Glovo inked a €100m partnership with real estate firm Stoneweg to scout out property for these dark stores. It currently has dark stores in Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon and Milan and aims to have 200 across several European cities by the end of the year.
“Over the last few months, we’ve moved very, very quickly but our vision remains unchanged,” Glovo chief executive Oscar Pierre said.
“This investment will allow us to double down in our core markets, accelerate our leadership position in places where we are already very strong and continue to expand our excellent q-commerce division, as well as bring new innovations to our unique multi-category offering to extend more choice to our customers.”
The company said it will grow its engineering team from 300 to 500 at offices in Barcelona, Madrid and Warsaw under new CTO Narek Verdian.
Jonathan Green, founder of lead investor Lugard Road Capital, said that there is still much potential to be tapped in on-demand delivery.
“As a long-term investor in Glovo, we are excited to watch the company continue to delight its customers through its unique multi-category offering, amidst an enormous market opportunity in both existing and new geographies.”
