(Bloomberg) — Rapid delivery firm Jokr raised $260 million in new financing from its investors, giving the company fresh cash to expand its business across the U.S. and Latin America.
Founded by Chief Executive Officer Ralf Wenzel, a former Delivery Hero SE executive, Jokr aims to bring consumers fresh groceries and other consumer goods in 15 minutes from urban micro-fulfillment centers.
After launching in March, the New York-based company’s latest fundraising round gives Jokr a $1.2 billion valuation, according to a statement shared with Bloomberg. Jokr last raised $170 million in July.
Venture capitalists and startups are racing to take market share in the growing quick commerce sector. Investors in Jokr’s round were a mix of new and existing backers, including Tiger Global and Balderton, GGV and Activant.
Gross merchandise value — the worth of goods sold through its platform — has grown on average 15% every week, according to the statement. Jokr now operates about 200 micro-fulfillment centers across 15 cities.
The company is seeing most of its growth from existing users, with half of new customers coming to Jokr by word of mouth, Wenzel said in an interview. He added that the company is increasingly focused on its grocery offering and that the majority of the firm’s business is in Latin America.
“We’ve had phenomenal growth in our core geographies,” he added. “That gives a very strong conviction that this will be a business that can be a magnitude larger than what we are today.”
Other startups offering consumers rapid grocery have raised significant capital from investors, including Germany’s Flink SE and Gorillas Technologies GmbH, Turkey’s Getir, and the U.S.’s Gopuff. While some smaller firms in the sector have recently been acquired, Wenzel said he has no plans for mergers or acquisitions.
Jokr is active in the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru. The new funds will be split between expanding in existing cities and entering new ones in existing countries.
“Frequency is twice, even three times bigger than food delivery frequency. Cohort retention is bigger,” said Alexander Joel-Carbonell, a partner at HV Capital who led the investment in Jokr. “It’s such a fairly sticky product that those guys have created and they’re just literally starting.”
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