Spain-headquartered delivery services provider Glovo secured €450m ($529m) today in a series F round that included pizza chain franchisee Drake Enterprises and food delivery service Delivery Hero.
Hedge fund manager Luxor Capital Group co-led the round with affiliate Lugard Road Capital, and it also featured technology-focused investment adviser GP Bullhound. The cash was raised at a $2.35bn valuation, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.
Founded in 2015, Glovo operates an app-based on-demand logistics service spanning 20 cities and delivering consumer goods such as food, groceries and gifts.
The funding will support expansion in Glovo’s existing markets in addition to its Q-Commerce offering, which promises delivery times under 30 minutes for certain items, utilising a network of strategically placed dark stores.
The company has already opened dark stores in the cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Milan and Lisbon, intends to expand them to Valencia, Rome, Porto and Bucharest as it grows their number to 200 by the end of this year.
Glovo’s co-founder and CEO, Oscar Pierre, said: “We are thrilled to have the continued backing of Luxor Capital Group and all of our existing investors. Over the last few months, we have moved very, very quickly but our vision remains unchanged.
“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 round pushed Glovo’s overall funding to approximately $1.04bn and more than doubled the $1bn valuation at which it last raised money, in a $167m series E round in December 2019 led by Mubadala Investment and backed by Drake Enterprises, Lakestar and Idinvest Partners.
Lakestar had led the company’s $168m series D round six months earlier, investing together with Drake, Idinvest Partners and Korelya Capital at a reported $950m valuation.
Glovo was reportedly valued at nearly $350m in its previous round, when it raised $134m from restaurant group AmRest – which supplied $29m – e-commerce firm Rakuten, Idinvest, Seaya Ventures, GR Capital and Cathay Innovation in 2018. Delivery Hero invested $59m shortly afterwards that was likely part of that round.
Rakuten Capital, a subsidiary of Rakuten, led Glovo’s $35.2m series B round the year before with Cathay Innovation that included Caixa Capital Risc, the VC arm of financial services firm La Caixa, in addition to Seaya Ventures, Bonsai Venture Capital and Entreé Capital.
