Vayner/RSE, the venture capital firm backed by creative agency VaynerMedia, is set to exit US-based alcohol delivery service Drizly, which agreed yesterday to be bought by ride hailing service Uber for $1.1bn.
Drizly operates an e-commerce platform that offers beer wine and spirits to customers in 1,400 towns and cities through partnerships with local shops, allowing users to schedule delivery. It will operate as a subsidiary of Uber once the transaction closes.
Uber already delivers food from local restaurants to customers through its Uber Eats subsidiary, and has moved into areas such as groceries and prescription medicine as coronavirus restrictions have made those services more feasible.
The deal follows about $85m of funding for Drizly, which most recently completed a $50m series C round in August 2020 that was led by investment firm Avenir and backed by Tiger Global Management and unnamed existing backers.
The company closed a $4.8m seed round in 2014 featuring Vayner/RSE, Suffolk Equity Partners, Atlas Venture, Abundance Partners, Breakaway Ventures, Continental Advisors, Fairhaven Capital, Reynolds & Company Venture Partners and a range of angel investors.
Polaris Partners joined First Beverage Group and undisclosed existing investors to add $13m in series A funding the following year, before leading a series B round that closed at $17m in 2017.
Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of Uber, said: “Wherever you want to go and whatever you need to get, our goal at Uber is to make people’s lives a little bit easier.
“That is why we have been branching into new categories like groceries, prescriptions and, now, alcohol. Cory and his amazing team have built Drizly into an incredible success story, profitably growing gross bookings more than 300% year-over-year.
“By bringing Drizly into the Uber family, we can accelerate that trajectory by exposing Drizly to the Uber audience and expanding its geographic presence into our global footprint in the years ahead.”
