Miki Kuusi, CEO and co-founder of Wolt.
Wolt
Wolt, a food delivery app that extends to groceries and retail, raised $ 530 million while trying to take over Amazon.
The financing round in the six-year-old company was led by ICONIQ Capital, which also invested in Airbnb, Uber, Alibaba and Zoom. This brings the total investment in the business to $ 856 million. Wolt, who did not disclose his latest valuation, said he would use the money to ‘expand beyond restaurants’.
Miki Kuusi, who founded Wolt in Helsinki in 2014, told CNBC: “Our mission is to enable local restaurants and other brick-and-mortar operators to have the tools at their disposal to provide a better e-commerce experience. to offer their local customers what their massive overseas competitors can do today. ‘
He added: “We strongly believe that the next wave of e-commerce from the same week and same day delivery to delivery within the next 30 minutes will go as standard. This is what we are focusing on in all our markets, starting with the restaurant. ‘
Rapid growth
When Wolt launched in Helsinki in 2015, it had only ten restaurants on its platform and a small handful of downloads. By 2016, Wolt had about 100,000 app users and 450 restaurants.
Today, Wolt boasts more than 10 million users in 129 cities in 23 countries. It claims to have 27,000 restaurant and retail partners, 50,000 couriers and 2,000 employees.
Although Amazon is large in the US and many other countries, it is not as well established in some corners of Europe and large parts of Asia. In fact, the technology giant only has dedicated online stores for about 17 countries worldwide.
Amazon launched its first Nordic online store in Sweden last October with the domain name Amazon.se, but there is no equivalent in Norway and Finland. This means that customers have to make purchases there via Amazon stores in other European countries such as the UK (Amazon.co.uk).
But while Wolt wants to take on Amazon, Amazon is also approaching Wolt’s lawn: restaurant deliveries.
Amazon has invested in London’s Deliveroo, which in May 2019 led a $ 575 million round of financing in the company in exchange for a 16% stake. Deliveroo has also started delivering groceries in recent months as the coronavirus pandemic makes people think twice about leaving their homes.
Amazon also sells groceries on its platform from supermarkets such as Whole Foods, as well as Morrisons and Booths in the UK.
Capital raising during coronavirus
According to Kuusi van Wolt, it took less than three weeks to close the new financing round.
“We went from the first calls to signing a term sheet in about two and a half weeks,” he said.
Tiger Global, DST, KKR, Prosus, EQT Growth and Coatue have joined as new investors. Existing investors 83North, Highland Europe, Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, EQT Ventures and Vintage Investment Partners also participated.
Kuusi is also the founder of the European technology event company Slush. Slush went from a 300-person gathering in Helsinki in 2008 to one of the largest technology events in the world – attended by more than 30,000 people each year before the coronavirus pandemic.