Zapp, considered one of numerous startups presently battling it out in London and past by promising to allow you to order on a regular basis objects on-demand from its personal delivery-only shops, has quietly raised a brand new spherical of funding from main VCs, TechCrunch has discovered.
According to a number of sources, Silicon Valley’s Lightspeed and Europe’s Atomico (the VC agency began by Skype founder Niklas Zennström) have invested in Zapp’s unannounced Series A. Those identical sources have additionally confirmed that Zapp has raised round $100 million in whole, together with by way of an earlier seed spherical.
In addition to Lightspeed and Atomico, different buyers in Zapp embrace 468 Capital and Burda, alongside notable angels corresponding to Mato Peric, Christopher North (former Amazon UK CEO) and Stefan Smalla (Westwing CEO). One supply tells me that the startup’s Series A is the first deal that consumer-focused associate Sasha Astafyeva has led on Atomico’s behalf since joining the London-headquartered VC agency.
“We’re relentlessly focused on delighting our customers and generally do not comment on our capital structure. We are excited to bring Zapp to millions of customers in London and beyond this year,” stated Zapp, in an announcement issued to TechCrunch when requested about the Series A and listing of buyers.
Started final summer time, Zapp’s founders are Joe Falter, who was a part of the founding staff at Jumia, the place he led the on-demand companies enterprise by way of to the group’s IPO, and Navid Hadzaad, who most lately was a product chief at Amazon’s Seattle HQ after founding GoButler and scaling a number of ventures at Rocket Internet. The management staff additionally spans ex-employees of Deliveroo, Just Eat, Domino’s and Tesco, to call just some.
Zapp operates a vertical or “dark store” mannequin, seeing it set up its personal micro success facilities. They embrace a number of areas in London already: Kensington, Chelsea, Fulham, Notting Hill, Hammersmith, Shepherd’s Bush, Shoreditch, Islington and Angel.
Shunning the gig financial system mannequin utilized by firms like Deliveroo, Zapp employs its riders straight. It additionally emphasises sustainability and utilises an all-electric fleet.
From what we will glean on-line and by way of conversations with sources, Zapp additionally appears to be focusing much less on contemporary meals/groceries and extra on comfort à la goPuff in the U.S., thus concentrating on impulse purchases slightly than making an attempt to usurp the conventional grocery store. This is in distinction to a lot of the different darkish store rivals, though there’s clearly cross-over in all of the choices from a mess of gamers.
Alongside Zapp, darkish store operators in London alone embrace Getir, Gorillas, Jiffy, Dija and Weezy — with some additionally elevating and deploying important quantities of capital, together with, in some situations, using heavy discounting as the land grab accelerates.
