The company also innovated toward what has become the “delivery of everything” strategy - expanding its partnerships with grocery, pharmacy, and retail stores with the same focus on operational excellence and building leading consumer and courier experiences. Wolt swiftly took a number of actions to help restaurants navigate the changing environment - ranging from launching giveback programs and reducing commissions to highlighting local and vulnerable restaurants in apps and marketing, and paying restaurants twice a week to enable quicker access to capital to help them pay their employees and suppliers. As stay at home orders hit Europe early in 2020, restaurants relied on Wolt more than ever, and the company took this responsibility seriously as it played a much more critical role in the social fabric of its markets. We knew very quickly this was a team we wanted to back and were very fortunate to lead Wolt’s Series C round in April 2019.įast forward to today and the world and this industry could not be more different. We also discovered a group that, while very engaging and fun to work with, operated with incredible focus and purpose and at the same time with enormous care and respect for the broader team. What we discovered was an enormously high performing team that was bringing innovation, differentiated technology, operational excellence and financial discipline to food delivery, enabling them to operate successfully in a broad swath of cities of widely varying populations and densities, where others arguably could not. After our first call, we were so energized and impressed by Miki’s vision and execution to date that we jumped on a flight the next day to meet the team in Finland. Then a purposefully low profile but rapidly growing food delivery leader in Helsinki, the company had begun expanding its geographic footprint from its home region of the Nordics & Baltics to include other parts of Europe and Israel. In early 2019, we were introduced to Miki, founder and CEO of Wolt, which was founded to serve the needs of a three-sided marketplace - customers, restaurants, and couriers. These services have become increasingly ingrained in people’s lives. With the advent of the smartphone and the food delivery services that followed, technology has disrupted and enhanced one of the most fundamentally human experiences, enabling people to easily enjoy restaurant meals in the comfort of their homes. It’s hard to imagine today that, not too long ago, food delivery was limited to restaurants, such as pizzerias, that decided to fulfill the last mile themselves. We are excited to announce that we have led Wolt’s recent Series E financing and are deepening our partnership with Miki Kuusi, Riku Makela, Marianne Vikkula and the rest of the team at Wolt, a leading food delivery platform serving 23 countries.
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