Yummy, a Venezuela-based delivery app aiming to create the super app for the country, announced Friday that it has raised $ 4 million in funding to expand its dark store delivery operations across Latin America .
Donors included Y Combinator, Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, Canary, Hustle Fund, Necessary Ventures, and the co-founders of TaskUs. The total investment includes the pre-seeding capital raised in 2020.
“This seems like a contrary bet, but Yummy has quickly grown to become the # 1 super app in Venezuela, proving the team can scale business in a difficult area,” Mateen said in a statement. “Now Vicente and the rest of the Yummy team will expand into more traditional markets with the experience and support necessary to meet the inevitable challenges they face.”
Vicente Zavarce, founder and CEO of Yummy, founded the company in 2020 and is currently part of Y Combinator’s 2021 summer cohort. Born in Venezuela, Zavarce came to school in the US and worked in growth marketing at Postmates, Wayfair and Getaround before founding Yummy. Zavarce was a remote CEO last year stuck in the US due to travel restrictions but said he was making the best of it.
Yummy’s app is free to download and the company charges a delivery or dealer fee. Unlike some of its grocery delivery competitors, Zavarce said ProWellTech Yummy’s fees are “the lowest on the market” so they don’t affect the merchant’s ability to use the app.
Order delicious heatmap. Photo credits: Delicious
The company is pulling together other key components for its super app strategy, which also includes the introduction of a ride-sharing service this year. Yummy has already connected more than 1,200 merchants with hundreds of thousands of customers.
And over the past year, the company completed more than 600,000 deliveries of groceries, groceries, alcohol, and purchases. It reached a monthly gross merchandise volume of $ 1 million while also increasing its sales by 38% month-on-month.
Over the past eight years, the country’s political and economic challenges have led to the recent adoption of the US dollar, Zavarce said. In some cases, up to 70% of transactions are in dollars on-site. He said this protected the company from hyperinflation and ultimately created the opportunity for startups to do business in Venezuela.
Because of this, combined with more innovations in consumer technology over the past decade, Zavarce said there was no reason Venezuela shouldn’t have the best last mile logistics. Here Yummy has the option of combining several vertices into a super app with little to no competition.
“At some point other players will participate, but because we have a great app, we already have an amazing frequency of use,” he added. “We also already have 60% exclusivity of the grocery delivery market, which has allowed us to build a market ditch around the market. We believe that we are the right people to do this and see it as our responsibility to do so. “
Plans for the new funding include user acquisition – the company already has nearly 200,000 registered users – and expansion into Peru and Chile through August. At the same time, Zavarce will spend part of this capital to attract more users across Venezuela. He also expects to be in Ecuador and Bolivia by the end of the year.