The five most important retail tech news stories of the week
It’s Friday, the week is nearly done, so let’s kick back and reflect on another eventful week for the retail technology space. Here's your briefing on the most important and interesting stories from the past five days.
1. Aldi UK announces first ever Click and Collect offering
Aldi is piloting its first UK Click and Collect service.
The German discounter is currently running a trial for staff members from a store in the Midlands and plans to extend that to customers in the coming weeks.
2. Klarna valued at $10.65 billion after blockbuster funding round
Swedish buy now, pay later specialist Klarna has raised $650 million in an equity funding round, at a post money valuation of $10.65 billion.
This makes it the highest valued private FinTech in Europe and the fourth highest worldwide. The round was led by Silver Lake Partners, alongside GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, as well as BlackRock and HMI Capital.
3. GlobalData research aims to bust online destruction myth
New research from GlobalData looks to correct “some of the myths and misinformation about how retail is changing”.
4. Alibaba Cloud debuts last mile delivery robot
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group’s Alibaba Cloud division has unveiled an autonomous logistics robot for last mile deliveries.
5. Hey Ocado, Waitrose is doing fine now without you
Reporting its unaudited results for the half year ended 25th July, John Lewis Partnership noted that Waitrose has seen a strong pick up in demand since it parted ways with Ocado on 1st September.
“Waitrose.com orders were up 9% in the first week. Waitrose.com is now a £1 billion annualised business and we will further expand capacity by around 50% to 250,000 orders a week,” Chairman Sharon White said in a letter to Partners.
