Instant grocery app Getir acquires its competitor Gorillas

After weeks of rumors, Getir has announced that it is acquiring Gorillas. This is a major consolidation deal for the instant grocery delivery space. The Financial Times first reported that Getir has closed the acquisition of its competitor. TechCrunch has confirmed the news with Getir.

“Markets go up and down, but consumers love our service and convenience is here to stay. The super fast grocery delivery industry will steadily grow for many years to come and Getir will lead this category it created 7 years ago,” Getir founder Nazim Salur said in a statement.

Getir originally launched its service in Turkey in 2015. Over the past couple of years, many people started ordering groceries online because of lockdown restrictions. Getir, Gorillas, Flink and a cohort of startups tried to popularize a new model for grocery deliveries.

Instead of reserving a delivery slot for the next day, orders are processed instantly on those apps. The user experience works more like food delivery services, such as Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat Takeaway. You open an app, pick a few items, hit the order button and track your order from your phone.

Those services raised a ton of money and grew at a rapid pace during the COVID-19 pandemic. Behind the scenes, all those instant delivery startups built networks of dark stores in dense cities so that orders can be delivered in less than an hour.

In addition to these expensive operation costs, startups in the space spent a small fortune in promo codes and reduced delivery fees. But restrictions were lifted, VC funding dried up and some cities put some restrictions on dark stores. That’s why 2022 has been a rough year for the industry, leading to a lot of layoffs, pullbacks and consolidation moves.

In May, Getir announced that it would cut 14% of its global staff — more than 4,000 were impacted by the downsizing. In addition to its home country, Getir operates in various European countries, such as the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal. It operates in the U.S. as well.

Gorillas also had to conduct a round of layoffs earlier this year. It decided to focus on a handful of markets — Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K. and the U.S. The German startup acquired Frichti before it became harder to raise funding rounds.

According to the Financial Times’ Tim Bradshaw, the combined group is now valued at $10 billion. At the height of the instant grocery bubble, Getir and Gorillas reached valuations of $11.8 billion and $3 billion respectively. Gorillas investors are set to obtain 12% of Getir’s capitalization table.

As there is a lot of overlap between the two companies, there might some layoffs in some cities where both services are currently live. Reducing the number of dark stores could also help the company’s bottom line.