Existing investors Flashpoint and Addventure also participated in the funding. The crowdsourced service was founded in 2012 by Mike Alexandrovski and now operates in 11 countries: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.
Before creating the delivery app, Alexandrovski was reportedly planning a delivery game using virtual merchandise, the article said.
With almost 400 employees and one million registered couriers, users on the Dostavista app can get same-day delivery, sometimes in less than 90 minutes. The company says it is already profitable.
“These days, it’s possible to order food to your house in a half-hour [and a] taxi in minutes, but unless you’re an Amazon Prime member, your options for affordable, same-day delivery of goods are very limited,” says Alexandrovski. “That’s a problem, and one we intend to solve.”
The new funds will be used to expand and improve the product, hire more people and increase marketing efforts, the report said.
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Yandex is among Russia’s largest technology companies. It recently started a delivery service that lets customers request meals from restaurants even if they’re not on the menu. Yandex will also make meal kits with ingredients the customer requests, send them to a nearby restaurant to be cooked and then take care of delivery.
In 2017, Yandex partnered with Uber’s Russian unit to create a “cloud restaurant” service. It is a mashup of Yandex.eats, which delivers from restaurants, and Yandex.chef, a service that provides meal kits for home cooking. So far, the options consist of a list of hundreds of popular meals from its food businesses. The dishes will be priced at around 250 rubles ($3.86) and will initially be available in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
