RTIH looks at the retail technology space in September
RTIH takes a look back at an eventful month for the retail systems sector. Featuring Target, Uber Eats, Alibaba Group, Sainsbury’s, PayPal and Asos.
Good month for…
Uber Eats said that it was stepping up its battle for the UK everyday grocery delivery market by adding more than 340 Shell forecourt stores across the country to its platform.
Shell stores were previously on the Deliveroo platform, so it’s a big win for Uber Eats in a space that is red hot right now.
Its customers will now be able to have groceries from Little Waitrose, Jamie Oliver Deli and Budgens delivered “within minutes” through the Uber Eats app.
Mirakl, a French online marketplaces startup, announced a $555 million Series E funding round, led by Silver Lake.
The values the nine-year-old venture at roughly $3.5 billion, up from its $1.5 billion valuation in a fundraise in September 2020.
Asian merchant commerce platform Pine Labs raised an additional $100 million, hot on the heels of securing $600 million in a financing round in July.
E-commerce shipping platform venture, Sendcloud, closed a $177 million Series C funding round.
This was led by Softbank Vision Fund 2 with a “significant” strategic investment from L Catterton and participation from HPE Growth.
SellersFunding, which provides financial solutions for sellers on Amazon, Shopify, Walmart and other marketplaces, secured $166.5 million in a combination of equity and credit facility, with a Series A round led by Northzone, and also involving Endeavor Catalyst and Fasanara.
Misfits Market, a US-based e-commerce platform specialising in the delivery of food that would otherwise be wasted, closed a $225 million Series C-1, bringing its valuation to $2 billion and total equity raised to $526.5 million.
Online furniture retailer Made.com reported £214 million gross sales for the first half of 2021, representing 54% year-on-year growth.
Davidson Kempner Capital Management agreed a new £300 million lending facility with buy now, pay later venture DivideBuy and also acquired a minority equity stake in the company.
Another buy now, pay later specialist, Scalapay, raised $155 million in equity funding, at a $700 million valuation, as part of a Series A investment round led by Tiger Global.
Along with Klarna’s recent $46 billion valuation, this underscores just how hot the BNPL market is right now, given that Scalapay was only founded in 2019 and $155 million is a serious amount of money for a Series A round.
OLIO, a UK-based mobile app for the sharing of food and other items, closed a $43 million Series B funding round.
US startup Zippin raised $30 million in Series B funding from new and existing investors including OurCrowd, Maven Ventures, Evolv Ventures and SAP.
This brought the checkout free store venture’s total funding to more than $45 million.
Zippin said that the latest funding round would enable it to scale its platform and power tens of thousands of stores by 2025.
Customers include food service providers Aramark Corporation and Compass Group, Japan’s third largest convenience store chain Lawson, and Brazilian retailer Americanas.
Also this month…
InPost announced a new partnership with Tesco, which will see its automated parcel machines (APMs) deployed across the grocery giant’s entire large format store estate in the UK, potentially up to 500 sites, by the end of November.
Deliveroo Hop launched in central London in partnership with Morrisons.
The service, available through the Deliveroo app, will offer grocery delivery in as little as 10 minutes.
Alibaba Group’s Xiaomanlv robots have delivered more than a million parcels in China within one year of their launch.
Wang Gang, Head of the Autonomous Driving Lab at Alibaba’s global research arm, DAMO Academy, said: “Xiaomanlv achieving over one million delivery orders is just the beginning. It’s laid the groundwork for the future development and application of our autonomous driving technology.”
Sainsbury’s relaunched its same day home delivery service, having shelved it during the coronavirus outbreak. The grocery giant operates this from more than 250 UK stores.
Customers who order before midday can chose a post 5pm delivery slot or a collection from their local store after 4pm. Plans are afoot to expand this to a further 100 stores by the end of October.
Unified customer experience platform venture, Emplifi, announced the acquisition of Go Instore, a UK-based live streaming video startup that enables in-store experiences online.
Online fashion retailer Asos is to invest £14 million in a new tech hub in Belfast, Northern Ireland and create 184 new jobs over the next three years.
Asda partnered with startup Wayve to test out autonomous vans as part of the grocery giant’s last mile operation.
The trial will begin in early 2022 and Asda will be the first to commercially test the solution, using Wayve’s deep learning expertise to help navigate complex delivery routes in London.
The vans will operate under the supervision of a Wayve safety driver throughout the 12-month trial.
Next agreed a physical and online retail deal with Gap covering the UK and Ireland, months after the US company said it was shutting all its high street stores in those countries.
Beginning in 2022, a joint venture will see Next operate Gap’s online shopping business via its Total platform, host branded Gap concessions in selected physical locations, and offer Click and Collect options.
Co-op announced a new partnership with Amazon and a Starship Technologies powered acceleration of robot deliveries.
The moves are part of the UK retailer’s plan to more than double online sales from £70 million to £200 million by the end of the year.
Walmart has worked with Argo AI and Ford to launch an autonomous vehicle delivery service in Austin, Miami and Washington D.C.
This will use Ford self-driving test vehicles equipped with the Argo AI Self-Driving System to deliver Walmart orders to customers.
The service will be available within defined service areas of the three markets and will expand over time, with initial integration testing slated to begin later this year.
Aldi UK is trialling new checkout free technology in one of its London stores.
Spanish on-demand delivery venture, Glovo, reached an agreement to acquire grocery companies Lola Market and Mercadão.
wilko, a British high street chain which sells homewares and household goods, announced a £3 million investment in UK autonomous delivery company, StreetDrone.
The investment, which is part of a wider multi-million-pound pre-Series A round, will enable StreetDrone to accelerate the development of its delivery vehicle and systems.
The plan is to bring autonomous deliveries to Wilko consumers by the end of 2023.
US payments giant PayPal is set to acquire Japanese buy now, pay later venture Paidy in a $2.7 billion largely cash deal.
This closely follows Square’s announcement that it would buy Australian BNPL firm Afterpay for $29 billion.
Amazon opened an Amazon Fresh location in Dalston, London.
Situated at 28-31 Kingsland High Street, it is the sixth such UK convenience store to feature Just Walk Out Shopping tech, which was pioneered at the Amazon Go offering in the States.
The other five are in Camden, Ealing, Wembley Park, White City and Canary Wharf.
Meanwhile, after launching in Go stores and then larger Fresh supermarkets, the Just Walk Out technology is set to be deployed in two Whole Foods locations Stateside.
The service is coming to Washington DC and Sherman Oaks, California next year.
Majid Al Futtaim, which owns and operates shopping malls, retail, and leisure establishments in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, announced the launch of checkout free store, Carrefour City+.
A first for Carrefour worldwide and opening this month in Mall of the Emirates, this taps artificial intelligence technology.
Store access and shopping payment is enabled via the MAF Carrefour app. Once inside Carrefour City+, every item picked up by customers is automatically added to a digital shopping basket and the purchase is completed by walking out.
Target Chief Information Officer (CIO) Mike McNamara, who has headed up the retailer's IT operations since 2015, is set to retire in 2022.
“I’ve always been planning for Target to be my last job. I’ve loved every minute of my time here, but professionally and personally, the timing is great to begin the process of retiring and transitioning to a new CIO,” he said in an online post.
“The technology team and platform are in brilliant shape and our business is already taking on its next growth chapter.”
This month marked one year since Marks and Spencer went live on Ocado.
The move saw the latter begin to sell and deliver food from M&S rather than Waitrose, after M&S splashed out £750 million to acquire a 50% stake in Ocado’s retail business.
“With operations commencing at Ocado's latest fulfilment centre in Purfleet, capacity will soon increase to 600,000 (from around 356,000) orders a week,” M&S tweeted.
Autonomous delivery services venture, Starship Technologies, added Dalton Philips to its board.
Philips is currently CEO at daa, whose principal activities include the operation and management of Dublin and Cork Airports, global airport retailing subsidiary ARI, and international aviation consultancy daa International.
He was previously CEO at UK supermarket chain Morrisons from March 2010 to February 2015.
A group of trade bodies representing the UK retail and hospitality sectors appealed for parliament to intervene to protect British businesses and consumers from “the mounting cost of anti-competitive practices in card payments”.
