The Dutch online supermarket is to expand to Germany with fresh capital.
Hamburg The Edeka partner Picnic receives 600 million euros in fresh venture capital. The Dutch delivery service for supermarket items wants to use the money to accelerate its international expansion. The main financier in the fourth big growth round (Series D) is the asset management of the Gates Foundation of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda.
Picnic is getting a large amount of funding in a phase in which the competition between suppliers of supermarket items is growing tremendously. Delivery services such as Gorillas and Flink, which promise delivery within ten minutes, are causing a sensation.
Picnic, on the other hand, takes a completely different approach: The Dutch drive their delivery vans on fixed routes and thus only reach streets on certain days of the week. Picnic PR likes to compare that to the milkman of the past.
A few years ago, Picnic attracted attention in the industry with the principle. The fixed delivery times promised to lower the cost of delivery and thus make the delivery business more profitable. At the moment, however, venture capitalists are also finding those concepts that, like gorillas, allow for high start-up losses.
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Picnic wants to put the money into the long-awaited expansion in Germany. “We will continue to invest in our expansion and our technological lead for the benefit of our customers,” said co-founder Joris Beckers. To this end, Picnic will purchase new automated warehouses and other electric vehicles.
So far only in the border area
Beckers wants to reach a billion euro turnover in 2021. The company was recently launched in France. So far, the company in Germany has only dared to venture into the border region to its Dutch homeland. Most recently Beckers also won Edeka as an investor who wants to turn Picnic into its online sales channel.
The supermarket giant also sold its own online supermarket Bringmeister to the Czech holding company Rockaway Capital, which already operates several online supermarkets in Eastern Europe. Apparently Edeka is taking part in the new financing round: All existing investors are there, said Picnic.
More: Every fourth German orders groceries on the Internet
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