Last week’s most read RTIH retail technology articles

These are the retail systems articles that caught your fancy during the past seven days, including Deliveroo, Nuvemshop, Instacart and AO.

Amazon veteran Devesh Mishra joins Deliveroo as Chief Product and Technology Officer

Deliveroo has announced the appointment of Devesh Mishra as Chief Product and Technology Officer.

He joins from Amazon, where he has spent the past 16 years.

Most recently, Mishra was Vice President, Global Supply Chain at the e-commerce giant, overseeing a team of thousands made up of engineers, data scientists and product managers, operating a supply chain spanning 185 markets.

Before that, he was Director for Amazon’s WW Inventory Buying and Sourcing, where he was responsible for over 200 product lines in nine countries, supporting +$40 billion of revenue.

Facebook wannabe Instacart should rethink MFCs move

US grocery delivery venture Instacart has been making a series of interesting moves as it prepares to launch an IPO later in 2021 or early 2022.

This includes naming Fidji Simo, a high ranking executive at Facebook, as CEO. In turn, Simo recently chose Facebook veteran Carolyn Everson to be Instacart's President.

“I like the changes as it provides Instacart with a more experienced executive team to run the company,” former Amazon exec and supply chain consultant Brittain Ladd said in a LinkedIn post.

Instacart also recently partnered with Fabric to open micro-fulfilment centres (MFCs), although Ladd is less impressed with this initiative.

Ten retail technology investments that should be on your radar

These companies are leading the way in providing innovative retail tech powered customer experiences, including Best Buy, Watsons, New Look, Sodexo and John Lewis Partnership.

Ten big retail technology funding rounds you need to know about

RTIH rounds up the retail tech ventures who have recently bagged significant investments, including MakerSights, FullStory, refurbed, Cart.com, Suma Brands and Trendyol.

Silent Sainsbury's falls victim to Led By Donkeys PR stunt over GB News ads

#SilentSainsburys was trending on Twitter last week as the grocery giant came under increasing pressure to stop advertising during Nigel Farage’s new show on GB News.

Retailers rethink Black Friday 2021 plans amid Covid outbreak

46% of global retail marketers are considering cancelling their in-store Black Friday 2021 sales due to ongoing uncertainties around Covid-19, according to research from Emarsys.

This also reveals that 81% are planning to actively encourage customers to shop online rather than in-store as a precaution.

PMC’s Paul Mason wins at Retail Systems Awards 2021

PMC Founder and Chairman, Paul Mason, has picked up the Outstanding Individual Achievement award at the Retail Systems Awards 2021.

E-commerce venture Nuvemshop raises $500m on $3.1 bn valuation

Latin American e-commerce platform, Nuvemshop, has raised a $500 million Series E round of funding.

This was co-led by Insight Partners and Tiger Global Management, with participation from Alkeon and Owl Rock.

Grubhub and Yandex launch robot food delivery at Ohio State University

Grubhub and Yandex Self-Driving Group are rolling out food delivery via Yandex’s robots at The Ohio State University (OSU).

The two companies announced a tie up in July and this is the first US college campus to go live with their service.

AO Bertha machine crunches its two millionth fridge

Online electricals retailer AO has recycled over two million fridges at its recycling plant in Telford.

With several council recycling sites forced to close due to Covid-19 restrictions, the UK has seen an increase in fly tipping over the last year.

During the lockdown period of April 2020 to April 2021, AO received over 328,000 unwanted fridges at its plant from customers, up by 68% compared to the previous year.

The pureplay has been responsibly disposing of its customers unwanted fridges since 2017, all thanks to a fridge crunching machine called Bertha.