On-demand grocery startup Instashop acquired by Delivery Hero for $360M — Greece’s biggest tech exit yet

Both Delivery Hero and InstaShop are already profitable. The bigger of the two today posted half-year results that noted revenues were up 93.7% on a year-on-year basis to €1,126.8 million ($1.3 billion) in the period, although gross profit declined slightly given the impact of lockdowns and curfews, it said, posting gross profit of €167.2 million versus €168.3 million a year ago.

The plan is for InstaShop to stay as an independent brand under its current leadership team, both to expand in MENA, but also to look at how to apply its model to other markets. This puts it (and now Delivery Hero) a significant step ahead of US companies like Instacart, which was of the pioneers and most popular purveyors of the grocery-on-demand model in the US but hasn’t really exported its service outside of North America.

DeliveryHero — which is now traded publicly in Germany with a market cap of nearly €19 billion ($22 billion) — is already running grocery delivery services across most of its operations in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Middle East/Africa, its founder and CEO Niklas Ostberg told TechCrunch.

“The largest part in Latin America and MENA but Asia catching up quickly. Today we cover 22,000 vendors in our quick commerce area,” he said. “InstaShop is unique in their customer experience. We looked into 100+ grocery players last year and InstaShop is a magnitude better than anything we have seen. This is one reason why they can grow incredibly fast while still being profitable. Together with Delivery Hero they can further improve their customer experience by offering faster delivery and more shops.”

If you count that they are from Greece, this is one of the largest exits for a Greek-founded company.

“The partnership with Delivery Hero is a great opportunity for us to continue to grow our business and put the group’s expertise to use,” said Tsioris, the CEO. “I really enjoyed working with Delivery Hero on this deal and am thrilled to continue to further expand the reach and quality of our service at InstaShop. Delivery Hero is a network driven by ambitious founders and entrepreneurs just like ourselves, and we are proud to become part of this family.”

The transaction is said to set a record value for a Greek startup and is one of the largest recent exits in the MENA region more generally. The previous largest Greek deal was Microsoft’s acquisition of Softomotive for around $150 million. Prior to this, other notable Greek exits include Samsung’s purchase of Innoetics and Daimler buying TaxiBeat — both for less than $50 million each.

Instashop was initially backed in 2015 by VentureFriends, a European early stage investor from Greece, and Jabbar, an investor in the MENA region. Notably, VentureFriends’ founding partner Apostolos Apostolakis co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace also acquired by Delivery Hero, in 2015.