Kurly, a provider of online premium grocery service Market Kurly, has completed a KRW100 billion Series D fundraising round led by existing investors and new participant Global Venture Partners.
Market Kurly, launched in May 2015, has disrupted the online grocery industry through logistics innovation. Its ‘Morning Star Delivery’ service is the fastest and freshest delivery system available to Korean consumers. All orders placed by 11 am are delivered by 7 am the next morning, including fresh produce harvested that same day.
Market Kurly aims to solidify its No1 position in the daybreak grocery delivery market. The Series D investment will be used to ensure that Market Kurly retains stable service quality as the business scales rapidly. Supply chain management will be secured by building closer cooperation with suppliers. To secure sustainable growth, Market Kurly plans to recruit substantially in IT.
The IT recruitment drive will enable Market Kurly to speed up its development, including a key transition to AWS Cloud Native and the construction of a processing platform for large-scale data management. New service solutions will also be developed, based on this data.
Sophie Kim, CEO, says: “Market Kurly’s innovative, ‘cold-chain’ system from producer to consumer, which maintains temperatures optimally suited to each product, means that we can offer customers the freshest products at the fastest speeds, compared to other online grocery services. With this latest investment, we can secure internal processes and build a talent pool so that we can continue to increase our grocery market share, while maintaining quality.”
“Market Kurly has shown its strong presence as a leading player in fast growing online grocery market,” says Tiantian He, Vice President of Sequoia China. “We are deeply impressed with Sophie Kim, CEO at Kurly Inc., bearing vision, passion and drive, which leads us to participate in Series D again. We will continue to support Kurly.”
Spyro Korsanos, Managing Partner, Global Venture Partners, adds: “Market Kurly has an outstanding track record. With KRW 157 billion in sales in 2018, it has grown three times since 2017. We’re investing because Kurly offers Korean consumers something unique – sustainable, high-quality food combined with excellent customer service and leading-edge logistics. Adoption is building quickly, with monthly sales reaching KRW 30 billion in January, breaking all records.”
