Internet and telecommunications group SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 led a $425m series E round for Weee, a US-based delivery service focusing on ethnic and geography-specific groceries, on Monday.
The round was filled out by Greyhound Capital alongside unnamed existing investors and it pushed the company’s overall funding to over $820m.
Weee sources and provides a range of more than 10,000 hard-to-find ethnic grocery products North America through an online platform.
The company has Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Latino, Vietnamese, Filipino and Indian offerings available for order through its service, which it says it is expanding by more than 500 new items each week, while also partnering with more than 1,000 restaurants.
The capital will be used to expand Weee’s platform across new and existing ethnic grocery categories. Lydia Jett, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, which manages Vision Fund 2, is joining its board of directors in conjunction with the deal.
A spike in demand for online takeaway and food delivery services, which have benefitted large incumbent players like Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Postmates as well as rapid delivery newcomers like Getir and Gorillas, have also opened market possibilities for specialist community-focused offerings like Weee.
HungryPanda, the UK-based operator of a food delivery service concentrating on the Asian diaspora, secured $130m in a December 2021 series D round backed by Burda Principal Investments, a a vehicle for media group Hubert Burda.
LocalGlobal led a $3.4m pre-seed round for UK-based cultural food delivery service Oja, which has an initial focus on serving the large African and Caribbean communities of London, in March 2021. Yababa, a Germany-based same-day delivery service catering primarily to the large Turkish and Arabic communities in Berlin, closed a $15.5m seed round eight months later.
Outside of groceries, Asian community-focused dating service East Meet East and The Juggernaut, the owner of an online media platform targeted at the South Asian diaspora, have each raised money from corporates for their US-based offerings in recent months.
Larry Liu, founder and chief executive of Weee, said: “We have seen tremendous growth in 2021, even through the easing of covid-19 related pressures, as our customers continue to discover affordable access to a wide array of exciting products and food online.
“We look forward to building on that momentum as we add depth to our investor base with Softbank’s global e-commerce expertise and welcome them to the board. Their partnership will further enable Weee to serve customers in the $360bn-plus ethnic grocery and food market.”
DST Global led the company’s $315m series D round in March 2021, joining Tiger Global Management, Blackstone and Arena Holdings, having previously provided $35m in series C funding for the company in August 2020.
Weee subequently agreed to buy Ricepo, a US-based provider of delivery services for Asian food, for an undisclosed price in October 2021.
Photo courtesy of Weee!, Inc.
