Asian Grocery Startup Weee! – a multicultural e-grocer, has raised $425 million in Series E funding led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 to become “the major source for food at home,” according to Larry Liu, the company’s founder and CEO, who told TechCrunch that the company’s monthly active users grew by 150 percent last year.
There was a $316 million Series D fundraising round last March, and this latest round brings Weee! valuation to $4.1 billion. According to CEO Larry Liu, the company has already raised over $800 million, more than doubling its total funding to date.
When Larry Liu arrived in the United States as a new immigrant in 2003, one of his earliest disappointments was the unavailability of Chinese products available in local retailers. Originally from Hubei, a state noted for its freshwater fish and lotus-inspired food, Liu was forced to adapt to a limited supply of freshwater fish accessible at Asian grocery stores throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
Liu, who wants to push the company to the next level, decided to accept the new funding. Despite this, he plans to expand Weee! supply chain, focus on developing vendor relationships, and import things directly to the United States.
“We have a really compelling and unique value proposition in targeting underprivileged neighbourhoods and want to offer the most incredible variety for the community,” he continued. When it comes to differentiating ourselves from the competition, we’re doing a good job at it.
The company plans to develop warehouse automation and artificial intelligence technology in order to give customers with the most relevant product suggestions.
According to Larry Liu, the most important factors to examine are the type of product and the price. By expanding into household and beauty products he hopes that Weee! will become more of a mainstream store than an ethnic one.
Why the idea of Asian Grocery Startup Weee! makes sense
The quantity of products offered at traditional brick-and-mortar grocery stores is typically limited by the amount of shelf space available on the store’s inventory of products. Weee! is relying on the provision of a varied range of ethnic groceries in underdeveloped areas in order to attract new consumers and grow the company.
Having been one of the first Asian American focused online grocers, one of the company’s primary goals was to relieve customers’ frustrations associated with having to shop at a variety of small super markets by providing a broad range of Asian goods that are otherwise difficult or impossible to find in most American locations.
As millions of people have been compelled to cook and dine at home as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the five-year-old company has risen dramatically, just as other businesses in the food e-commerce market have seen growth. According to data from Statista, around one-fifth of Americans shopped grocery products over the internet during the pandemic in order to avoid going to the grocery store themselves. Instacart and Walmart Grocery, both of which provide online food delivery services, saw record download numbers this year.
Liu, who is now the chief executive officer of Weee!, stated that COVID-19 played a “very essential part” in his company’s recent expansion and helped the company achieve financial success.
As he said, the company was already growing at a quick pace before COVID-19, with even more big plans for expansion in the future. People are spending more money as a result of the closure of restaurants. Many people are unfamiliar with the concept of grocery delivery.
The company’s annual revenue is estimated to be in the low hundreds of millions of dollars, despite the fact that it has experienced a 700 percent increase in business year over year.
Beyond the participation of Greyhound Capital, the funding comes on the heels of a strong year for venture capital-backed online grocery retailers in the United States. According to a research on the sector, online grocers, mobile apps, and marketplaces accounted for more than half of the $39.3 billion in venture capital investment in food-tech enterprises in 2021.
Weee! reportedly hopes to use the extra capital to improve its Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian, and Latin services, as well as to expand its international operations.
Source Links:
Asian Grocery Startup Weee! picks up $425M for ethnic online grocery delivery | PitchBook
