Delivery App Glovo Notches $166M To Expand Development Team

In a Series E round headed up by Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala state investment company, Spain’s on-demand delivery app Glovo has notched €150 million ($166 million) in funding. The company’s raise comes after a €150 million round that was announced in April and $134M in a Series C round last year. This brings the total amount raised since the business’ 2015 founding to approximately $488 million, according to reports.

The startup, which is based in Barcelona, says the newest funding has put its valuation beyond a billion dollars, making it one of the rare Spanish “unicorns.” Oscar Pierre, the company’s co-founder, would not disclose the exact valuation that investors are placing on the business, aside from acknowledging the unicorn status publicly.

According to the report, Glovo figures that it’s only the second privately held company in the nation to reach that level of valuation.

It is said that a large slice of the company’s Series E funding will be used to grow the company’s engineering team, with the intention to bring onboard approximately 300 more developers by the middle of next year.

Glovo’s market focus is still fixed on the core regions where it already has operations, including South West Europe, South America and Eastern Europe and Africa. The strategy has reportedly been to go after areas where rivals haven’t yet established themselves as the go-to on-demand delivery offering.

Glovo, according to a past report, boasts that it can get shoppers anything locally “within minutes,” which includes groceries, McDonald’s and pharmaceuticals. The company says it has 16,000 associated partners and 5.5 million unique users, per a report earlier this year. At the time, the service was said to be available in 124 cities within 21 countries, with the inclusion of Sub-Saharan Africa.