Venture Capital: Rapid Grocery Delivery Startup Flink Raises $750M
Founded in 2020, Flink scooped a pre-money valuation of $2.1 billion.
Flink, the grocery 10-minute delivery startup operating out of Berlin and serving 10 million customers in more than 60 cities, has closed a $750 million Series B round led by DoorDash (NYSE: DASH). The lion’s share of the funding will be used to continue the startup’s growth, with a small portion earmarked for strategic acquisitions. (TechCrunch)
Other investors participated, including existing Mubadala Capital. Flink raised $240 million in June via a Series A round within months of its founding in December 2020.
To TechCrunch, founder Oliver Merkel said Flink was able to stand out from the instant delivery crowd because of the founders’ impressive backgrounds, including Bain and Rocket Internet, and previous entrepreneurial successes.
“I think what we bring and why could we win market leadership in such a short amount of time is because we are obsessed about how we do things… and we bring some experience to the table. We made so many mistakes elsewhere, and we hope we’ve learned from those,” Merkel said.
Heavy investor interest in “q-commerce” (quick commerce)
The DoorDash investment in Flink is significant in the light of the recent investment by Delivery Hero (ETR: DHER) in Flink rival Gorillas, which too was founded in 2020 and clocked a similarly meteoric growth trajectory.
Delivery Hero took up $235 million from Gorillas’ $1 billion round in October, and is estimated to own about 8% of the startup.
“We are just getting started as we receive daily questions from people who ask, when they can reach our services,” said Flink’s Merkel to Reuters.
Related Story: Delivery Hero Takes $235M Chunk Of Gorillas’ $1B Funding Round
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