Depop Founder Simon Beckerman’s DELLI Food Marketplace Raises $7.2M
Summary
Simon Beckerman, founder of peer-to-peer eCommerce platform Depop, popular for buying and selling used clothing, is looking to apply the same model to the food world no, not secondhand foods, but a marketplace for independent sellers to connect with buyers.Said marketplace, DELLI, announced on LinkedIn Tuesday (Sept. 6) that it has raised $7.2 million following the companys roughly $2.9 million in seed funding announced in December.This latest round was co-led by Balderton Capital and HV Capital, both onetime Depop investors, apparently once again getting behind Beckermans proven formula. Depop, for its part, followed a similar pattern, raising about $2 million in its seed round and $8 million in its Series A, only to be sold six years later to Etsy for $1.6 billion.Read more: Etsy Raises Stakes in Apparel Resale Segment With $1.6B Acquisition of DepopI am really excited to announce DELLIs $7.2 million raise to further ignite growth and expand its offer to makers and consumers alike, Beckerman said in a statement. DELLIs success over the year, from the 200 makers already signed up to the app to units sold, highlights that there is space in the market for DELLI and a consumer desire for its service.DELLIs marketplace allows chefs, home cooks and other food makers to sell their items for pickup or delivery, using a drop model wherein these sellers make a given product available in limited quantities at a given time. The marketplace is meant to cater to consumers new food habits, changed in the years since March 2020.The pandemic was unsurprisingly a huge boon to the cottage food industry, Greta Anderson, principal at Balderton Capital, wrote in a Medium post on the subject Tuesday. However, a return to normalcy has not seen these trends dissipate, fueled by hybrid work setups, rising costs leading many to seek extra income, and importantly significant liberalization of the legislation regarding home chefs in the U.K. and the U.S. DELLI is the first platform that offers these home sellers support to get their business up and running.Indeed, a significant share of consumers across financial lifestyles now buy food online, according to data from the August edition of PYMNTS monthly ConnectedEconomy study, The ConnectedEconomy Monthly Report: Paycheck-to-Paycheck Consumers Digitally Disengage.