Buymie, a grocery delivery company based in Dublin, Ireland, announced today that it has raised €5.8 million (~$6.53 USD) in new funding. The round was led by Wheatsheaf Group, the food and agriculture investment arm of the Grosvenor Estate, with participation from existing backers Act Venture Capital, Sure Valley Ventures, Haatch Ventures, and HBAN.
This is the second funding announcement from Buymie in as many months. This new cash appears to be an add-on to the €2.2M (~$2.39M USD) Series A round the company started in April of this year. This brings the total amount of funding for Buymie to €10.6M (~$11.93M USD).
As we wrote back in April, Buymie is analogous to Instacart here in the U.S. Customers order through the app and Buymie shoppers go into stores like Lidl and Tesco to pick items out and make home deliveries.
Right now, demand for grocery delivery is skyrocketing because of the coronavirus pandemic. In April, Buymie told the Irish Times that it was experiencing 39 percent month-over-month growth and had seen a 300 percent increase in app downloads.
Back then, the company’s services were available to 490,000 households in the greater Dublin area. As part of today’s announcement emailed to The Spoon, Buymie said that it has just launched in the Bristol metropolitan area of the UK, the company’s first such expansion outside of Ireland. With its new funding, Buymie says that it will continue rapid growth to new markets both in Ireland and the UK.
Buymie’s fundraise comes just days after Instacart announced it had raised an addition $225 million to keep up with demand for grocery delivery here in the U.S. It appears that investors, at least, aren’t worried about demand dropping off too precipitously as lockdown restrictions start to ease.
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