Russia Delivery Service Dostavista Raises $15M

The same-day delivery service Dostavista, which was founded in Russia, has raised $15 million in a Series B funding round led by Vostok New Ventures, as reported on Tuesday (Aug. 13).

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.

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.