France’s 15-Minute Grocery Delivery Startup Cajoo Raises $40M as eGrocery Space Grows

The ultra-fast grocery delivery space is heating up. In France, startup Cajoo, which delivers grocery orders by bicycle within 15 minutes, is raising funds to build out its presence in the country. The company just raised $40 million in its Series A round, reported TechCrunch, led by top French grocery chain Carrefour. In addition to being an investor, Carrefour is also helping Cajoo with procurement.

Cajoo, which was founded in February 2021, currently has a presence in 10 cities in France, serving more than 100,000 customers and offering almost 2,000 SKUs.

The Context

Around the world, ultra-fast delivery options promising groceries in 15 minutes or less are emerging to capture consumers’ rising demand for instant convenience.

In late August, Buyk, a 15-minute grocery founded by the creators of leading Russian grocery delivery service Samokat, went live in New York, a city which already has Fridge No More’s 15-minute grocery delivery service and Gorillas’ 10-minute option. In Turkey, Getir, a company that delivers groceries within 10 minutes by scooter, is raising funds by the billions. Even Instacart, noting the competition, is speeding up delivery times, trying out a 30-minute option.

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What Consumers Are Saying

The online grocery delivery category is still in its early days. PYMNTS’ recent survey of over 2,300 U.S. consumers, featured in our report What Consumers Expect From Their Grocery Shopping Experiences, created in collaboration with ACI Worldwide, finds that the online grocery delivery space has been catching on slower than other delivery categories. Only 23% of consumers are ordering grocery delivery online, and only 34% are buying groceries online at all.

For comparison, data from a PYMNTS census-balanced survey of over 5,000 U.S. consumers published in the report, The Bring-It-To-Me Economy: How Online Marketplaces And Aggregators Drive Omnichannel Commerce, created in collaboration with Carat by Fiserv, found that 91% of consumers had made at least one purchase on Amazon in the last year, and 70% had shopped on another nationally recognized digital marketplace.

See also: Digital Features Can Help Grocers Win Over 43% of Shoppers

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What the Experts Are Saying

Penetration may remain low, but the online grocery delivery space has grown dramatically since March 2020.

“I think back, pre-COVID, nobody woke up in the morning and said, ‘Oh, you know what I need? I need a new grocery solution,’” said Bentley Hall, CEO of Bay Area grocery and meal kit delivery company Good Eggs, in a recent interview with PYMNTS. “And in many ways, the pandemic forced or required everybody to ask that question. I don’t think that’s going to change — I think that question will be asked more and more frequently.”

Now, consumers’ expectation of on-demand grocery convenience is growing.

“Demand is greater than ever for giving customers access to their immediate needs,” Ashwin Wadekar, chief of staff at Gorillas, told PYMNTS in an interview. “What began as an early adopter trend pre-pandemic and suddenly became a necessity as lockdowns hit has now turned into something that consumers see as customary when it comes to their grocery shopping experience.”

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