Record Exit for Greek Founders: Instashop acquired by Delivery Hero for $360M

Athens/Dubai, 27th August 2020 — Instashop has agreed to sell its on-demand grocery business to Delivery Hero for $360M. The transaction will combine Delivery Hero, a global leader in takeaway delivery, with a company that has deep expertise in scaling grocery delivery across several markets. The transaction sets a record value for a Greek startup and one of the largest recent exits in the MENA region.

The company was initially backed back in 2015 by VentureFriends, a European early-stage investor from Greece, and Jabbar, a seasoned investor in the MENA region. VentureFriends continued to support Instashop, with their second fund, which is backed by the Equifund*, as the startup scaled from a few hundred to tens of thousands of orders per day, becoming a market leader in the region. It is worth noting that Instashop did not require much support or capital. The team achieved the remarkable feat of building a large, fast-growing, and profitable company within 5 years having raised just $7M.

Instashop’s ability to scale operations rapidly has been essential in ensuring access to food and medical supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The surge in demand put the operations of the company to a test but Instashop successfully catered to a doubling of orders during the peak months. The acquisition by Delivery Hero follows a series of major acquisitions by tech giants in the MENA region, including Careem ($3B) and Souk ($580M). $360M is a record exit for a startup with a Greek founding team and operations in Greece and follows Softomotive’s acquisition by Microsoft earlier this year which is rumored to have been around $150M. It’s anticipated that the success story will prompt more investors to get involved with start-ups in the region as well as inspire future entrepreneurs in the Greek startup ecosystem.

“It’s great to celebrate this success with a founding team we always believed in and worked closely with since 2015” says the VentureFriends team. “We are very happy and excited about their well-deserved success and about what that means for the broader tech entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region.”

The food and grocery delivery market has been growing steadily in the MENA region over the last five years. On-demand delivery of food and grocery items is estimated to be a USD $10B+ market in the UAE alone, with a major shift in online orders caused by the global pandemic expected to accelerate growth in this segment even further.

*EquiFund investment platform is an initiative created by cooperation between the Hellenic Republic and Elf. It is financed by the Greek ESIF Fund of Funds TAESYM under the European Union I European Regional Development Fund I Operational Programme EPANEK, the Elf, and private investors, with the objective to facilitate access to finance, mainly to SMEs, by developing the Venture Capital/Private Equity ("VC/PE") in Greece in cooperation with selected Financial Intermediaries.

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