e-Commerce & more I 25th to 31st Jan - #78

Game Stop or Stop Game!?

This week will stay in history!! The week when a dying brick & mortar gaming company Game Stop became the emblem of people revolution against hedge funds big money!!

The power of retail investors collaboration through social media might become a huge game changer for how the stock market will evolve in the future!

Delivery startup Wolt raises $530M, Parcel-Locker InPost makes history in IPO, Online retailer Boxed goes global, Walmart fulfillment automation continue, Scalapay raises 48M for scaling BuyNowPayLater, Ula Indonesia marketplace raises $20 million 

1. Food delivery company Wolt raises $530m to expand into retail

“Restaurant Delivery” to “Anything Delivery”

It seems that all food delivery companies are becoming logistics & last mile companies! In the last 6 months, companies like Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Deliveroo made moves from “restaurant delivery” to “anything delivery”. The last big one is Finnish delivery startup Wolt raising $530 to help retailer fight against Amazon! Amid the pandemic, Wolt saw revenue triple in 2020 to $345m and penetration into nonfood delivery is probably a great move!!

2. Parcel-Locker Firm InPost Soars After $3.4 Billion Dutch IPO

Supply Chain is the New Black!!

The biggest European IPO since 2018 Is…Is…Is…A PARCEL LOCKER COMPANY!!

Yes, you are reading this correctly! When I said 2 years ago that “Supply Chain is the new Black”, I meant it!! InPost, the Polish company’s automated parcel lockers just raised $3.4 billion, of course Covid has accelerated the ecommerce boom and Parcel Lockers are great solutions as they enable contactless delivery, more optimized, convenient & safer deliveries!! InPost company own 12,254 automated parcel machines and handled 249M deliveries in 2020!

3. Online wholesale retailer Boxed taps Aeon for Asia expansion

Boxed Going Global!!

The New York-based online retailer Boxed, which sells and delivers bulk-sized groceries just expanded to Malaysia by partnering with Aeon, one of Asia’s largest brick-and-mortar retail operators. Boxed which is also called “Costco for millennials” will be providing its software-as-a-service solution to Aeon in Malaysia.

4. Walmart bets bigger on online grocery as it ramps up automated fulfillment at stores

Go bots or Go Home!

Walmart continue the expansion of its ecommerce strategy through what they call local fulfillment centers (LDC), also known as Microfulfillment Centers (MFC). Basically, it’s all about putting inventory closer to customers in order to reach hyperfast services like next 1 hour, next 2 hours services.

The combination of automation and local fulfillment will be key for all the players in the grocery space. Walmart is testing one system called Alphabot! They also made partnership announcement with Micro-fulfillment startup Fabric and also work with automation Giant Dematic.

The needs for automation are still diverse and this will be a space that is still moving, hence having different kind of partners!

5. Scalapay raises $48M to scale its buy now, pay later service in Europe

Buy Now, Pay Later! BNPL, what is this? Well another popular acronym benefiting from Covid!

People Lockdown + Economic Crisis + Wallet Problem = “Buy Now Pay Later” being very very popular!

2 weeks ago, one of the leading BNPL company Affirm went successfully public!! Or we could say very successfully. The battle in this space is heating up and the Italy-based startup Scalapay just raised $48M to continue building it’s solution for the European markets and penetrate in the US! The company has already 1000 merchants and plan to compete with heavily funded companies like Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay & Alma!!

6. StartUp of the Week: Ula raises $20 million to expand its e-commerce marketplace in Indonesia

Ecommerce for all!!

While many successful marketplaces like Tokopedia, Lazada, Shopee have grown the ecommerce market in Indonesia in the past decade, there are many small businesses which are struggling with sourcing, working capital and supply chain!

In many countries in South East Asia, SMB are key for the economy and this is the reason why former executives from Flipkart, Amazon, P&G and Lazada formed Ula!

Ula which already serves 20K businesses just raised $20M to support sourcing and supply chain in order to create one-stop shop for everybody.

7. Replika Software Secures Series A to Power the Future of Social Selling

“Online Ecommerce” to “Social Commerce”

In the recent years, the rise of social commerce has exploded in all the mature ecommerce markets, especially in China!! That’s the trend that Replika Software is addressing. The startup just raised series A to develop it’s turnkey social selling solution enabling brands to empower their networks of social sellers to inspire and sell online! Not surprised to see L’Oreal & LVMH in the investors list as social commerce is going to be critical in their respective industries!!

Cheers, Stay Safe

Nabil