Stor.ai Raises $21 Million As Investors Flock To Online Grocery

Tel Aviv-based grocery tech solution Stor.ai (formerly Self Point) has just raised $21 million in its most recent funding round, which it will use to “integrate new, next-generation features into its core offering, accelerate the company’s growth in North America, and enter into new markets in Latin America and Europe,” the company announced on Tuesday (March 16). Stor.ai currently provides eCommerce platforms and in-store fulfillment solutions. Its partners include Unilever, Toshiba and Microsoft, among others.

“I am delighted to see stor.ai build on the 250 percent year-on-year growth we achieved over the past 12 months and begin an exciting new era for the company, in which we are set to expand both our product offering and our customer base,” the company’s CEO Orlee Tal said in the release. She added that the online platform replicates the feeling of in-store shopping for customers while providing businesses with easily integrated technological solutions amid the rapid expansion of online grocery.

Sure enough, funds are pouring in for digital grocery selections around the world. The Spoon points out that many of these companies have been seeing anywhere from tens of millions to over a billion dollars of funding since the start of the year, highlighting Chinese e-grocery company Xingsheng Youxuan as the top earner, bringing in a shocking $2 billion in funding in February. Meanwhile, in the States, Instacart’s latest fundraise came in at $265 million, bringing the company’s valuation up to $39 billion.

Amid the growth of online grocery, investors are backing more than just the well-established industry giants. On the West Coast, local-minded Bay Area grocery and meal kit delivery company Good Eggs just raised $100 million in funding. As the company’s CEO Bentley Hall told PYMNTS in a recent interview, “I think it’s interesting for me to think about online grocery, and how far it has come, and how, while this has had a huge spike in the last year, it’s still just chapter one of this transition, in my opinion, toward good food and toward online.”

On the other side of the country, Brooklyn-based grocery delivery startup Fridge No More raised $15 million in Series A funding, the company announced on Tuesday (March 16). The startup will use this fundraise to expand its 15-minute delivery capability to more areas in New York and throughout the East Coast. The company said the platform is “iteratively optimized based on store-specific customer demand” to enable these rapid deliveries from its “cloud stores.”

As the company’s founders Pavel Danilov and Anton Gladkoborodov said in the release, “We have been extremely successful with our current network of cloud stores and … we are well-positioned to become the leader in the instant grocery delivery market in the U.S.”

In Europe, hundreds of millions in funds are being funneled into the industry to speed up this transition. Rohlik, a Czech Republic-based online grocery platform that touts its quick deliveries and its large inventory, recently raised €190 million ($228 million) in its most recent funding round to expand further into Europe. Meanwhile, Crisp, a Dutch mobile-only online grocer that emphasizes its local partners and high-quality ingredients, raised €30 million ($36 million) in Series B funding to grow its vehicle fleet, its inventory and its base.

As shown in PYMNTS’ Omnichannel Grocery Report, created in partnership with ACI Worldwide, 64 percent of consumers buy at least some of their groceries online, and 23 percent of grocery shoppers are ordering groceries online to be delivered at home more than they were before the pandemic began. Additionally, the report found that the consumers with the highest incomes disproportionately tend to do their grocery shopping online. These massive investments in the online delivery space may well accelerate the adoption of online grocery, an already rapidly growing space, by years.

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