Gousto, a UK-based meal delivery service backed by consumer goods conglomerate Unilever, has completed a £33m ($41m) funding round led by family office Perwyn, TechCrunch reported yesterday.
The round also featured BGF Ventures, the venture capital arm of the UK state-mandated Business Growth Fund, VC fund MMC Ventures and online fitness trainer Joe Wicks.
Founded in 2012, Gousto provides a subscription service for meal kits consisting of ingredients and recipes, relying on artificial intelligence (AI) to offer personalised meals to users and making use of an automated packing process.
The funding will go to further development of the company’s AI technology and expansion of its capacity and back-end operations, including logistics, to cope with rising demand during the Covid-19 lockdown. Its last funding involved it raising $37m in a July 2019 that was also led by Perwyn and backed by Wicks.
Unilever’s corporate venturing subsidiary, Unilever Ventures, most recently took part in a $22.9m round for Gousto in January 2019, investing alongside BGF Ventures, Angel CoFund, Hargreave Hale, MMC Ventures and Wicks.
BGF Ventures, MMC Ventures, Angel CoFund and Hargreave Hale had backed a $39.8m round for the company in early 2018, two years after Unilever, financial services firm Barclays, MMC Ventures, Angel CoFund and BGF had supplied $12.5m.
Unilever and MMC Ventures took part in Gousto’s $13.5m series B round in 2015 together with BGF, Angel CoFund and Andi Peters, having contributed to an $8.3m series A round the year before that followed $3m in seed capital in 2013.
