Flink snaps up Cajoo, funding from Carrefour
Summary
Instant grocery startups sprang up and grew like weeds during COVID-19, fueled by consumers opting to practice social distancing and ready to order their food and sundries at the tap of an app, and VCs seeing an gap in the delivery market that had yet to be definitively filled. Flink says it is currently operating at an ARR of $500 million and is growing revenues at double-digit percentages week-on-week at the moment, although it is not disclosing actual sales numbers.As we have previously reported, Flink and Cajoo itself a very new company, one of the COVID babies in the space, launching only last year have been in an M&A dance since last autumn, one of the many deals that have been swimming around the heady European market. It may well have been very hard right now to do the former given the wider market conditions.From what we understand, while there were others also interested in the startup, Flink came out on top in part because of synergies between the two companies: one of Flinks big backers is also a supermarket chain, REWE, and both startups have built out sourcing and other functions leaning on their strategic backers scale.The Cajoo story has been amazing, said Henri Capoul, CEO of Cajoo, in a statement said with apparently very little irony given the young age of the company. And this is a small change for a giant like Carrefour, which operates 13,000 stores in 40 countries, with gross sales of 81.2 billion in 2021.Less than a year after joining forces with Cajoo, we are in position to take part in the market consolidation and forge a valuable strategic partnership with Flink. As a leader in home delivery in Europe, we are delighted to reinforce our e-commerce ambition and bring unprecedented value to Carrefour and Flink customers, said Elodie Perthuisot, chief e-commerce, digital transformation and data officer at Carrefour.Nevertheless, France where grocery chains were relatively late to the delivery game too and where in-person shopping in outdoor markets remains a part of the countrys cultural fabric is an interesting one to watch when considering the long-term viability and traction of instant-delivery startups.It will also be interesting to see how and if Flink comes to the U.K., one of the biggest markets in Europe, where it has yet to establish any kind of foothold to date.