the app that allows others to run your errands for you, was born from the concerns of a Catalan entrepreneur who, far from settling in for the job offered by Airbus (yes, he’s an engineer), decided to take the leap and follow in the footsteps of startups like Airbnb and Uber. When they began to be successful in the United States, Pierre decided to bet on this same business model, the collaborative economy, but with a new approach: saving time.
History of Glovo: a simple but innovative idea
If someone else can do it for me, why should I waste my time? Under this premise, Óscar Pierre, a 25-year-old from Barcelona, launched himself into the world of entrepreneurship and launched an innovative idea, glovo, an app where you can ask for anything you need, since there is always a glover ready to bring it to you in a matter of minutes. Be it food, shopping or a gift. Glovo is for you to spend your time on something more interesting than running tedious errands.
And it seems that Oscar Pierre’s idea did convince investors, among whom was , who initially decided to invest more than 100,000 euros in this idea. And so, In March 2015, Glovo was officially born.
The funding rounds
First with nine employees, who in 2019 they exceeded 1,000, The engineers hired by Pierre were implementing improvements in the application to gain flexibility and speed, because Glovo’s base is saving time, and over the years they were gaining followers among investors, who bet on Pierre’s idea.
Thus, the history of Glovo has been adding different rounds of financing over the years, among which we highlight the one in August 2016 when it got a new app, which decided to invest in continuing to promote the app in the cities where it was already established, such as Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Paris and Milan.
In 2018, , which it used to consolidate its international expansion and which would raise the valuation of the app to 300 million euros.
As Óscar Pierre explained at the time: “We are very happy with this new injection of liquidity that will allow us to continue growing rapidly. My main priority is to invest in increasing our tech team to continue optimizing the platform and offer the best service in the sector to the three main axes: delivery people, users and establishments, and thus become their reference delivery app”.
For 2019, Glovo made his big leap, after closing two rounds worth 150 million euros eachone in April and one in December, which made its valuation exceed 1,000 million dollars
Finally in 2021, the Spaniard managed to raise the highest in history in the Spanish digital sector. The same, for an estimated €450 million, will serve as the basis to promote its model of Quick Commerce with which it is proposed to compete with the internet giant, Amazon.
Talent Evolution technology
Following the appointment of Vice President of Engineering Mustafa Sezgin at the end of 2019Glovo announced the hiring of 300 new engineers technology to work alongside the former technology leader of Uber and SoundCloud. The objective was to use the growth of the team of technology to create a better and more efficient experience for users, reduce wait times for drivers and help the company to operate and be a leader in new markets in Africa, Europe and Latin America. Something that, as we will see later, was not completed successfully.
Exceed user expectations with online supermarkets
In 2019 and in order to become the application for everything in the city, Glovo also announced that it would increase the investment in the development and growth of categories on request beyond foodsuch as laundry or supermarket products.
To further accelerate the growth of these categories, invests it in the supermarket vertical through SuperGlovo; allowing supermarket products to be delivered to customers in a period of about 20 minutes from placing the order. These stores store up to 1,000 items allowing delivery men to make deliveries in Barcelona and Madrid.
Glovo Q-Commerce: ultra-fast deliveries
The new generation of online stores called QuickCommerce or Q-Commerce are imposed as a source to improve the customer experience with ultrafast deliveries, and Glovo could not be left out.
that started last November is based on B2B logistics that includes its network of dark stores that it plans to expand massively during this 2021. These spaces serve as logistics centers close to the customer, a space where third-party products are stored and that allow ultra-fast delivery times of less than 30 minutes.
Glovo currently already works with retail brands such as Unilever, Nestlé and L’Oreal, as well as supermarkets such as Dia, Alcampo and . By the end of 2021, the company expected to have at least 100 dark stores in operation and include alliances with , Douglas and Clarel, among others.
AliExpress and Glovo reinforce the last mile in Spain
In order to face the high demand for orders and speed up deliveries in Madrid and Barcelona, the great Chinese marketplace with Glovo to handle part of the volume of last-mile deliveries.
For now this service is in the testing phase, however if this collaboration is positive it could be enhanced and scaled to other cities. Under this agreement, glovers can choose to place “multipoint” orders, that is, parcel shipments that are picked up at their partners’ warehouses or Glovo supermarkets with up to a maximum of 18 packages per order.
Although Glovo has signed this agreement with AliExpress, Within its diversification plans, it is open to having other partners.
The glovers, the key to Glovo’s business model
Glovo’s success cannot be understood without its glovers, the delivery men who in less than half an hour (in most cases) satisfy the users’ errands. The glovers usually travel by bike or motorcycle and are self-employed who decide when to work, whether or not to accept an order, and in exchange they receive a fixed amount for each delivery they make.
But they are also the weakest link of its value chain… and the one that has given it the most headaches.
For years, different glovers have sued the company because of the relationship model that binds them to it: while Glovo understands that the delivery men are self-employed, several of them, as well as trade union organizations and some political parties, affirm that the glovers are a clear case of “false self-employment”: a relationship that favors the company by not assuming the labor costs of having them on staff and puts the delivery men in a weak situation when facing contingencies such as accidents, illnesses, etc.
Is judicialization of relations with the riders has caused multiple sentences to date, in various Spanish courts, with Glovo he regretted on several occasions that Spain was the only country in which this type of case is being prosecuted instead of bet on a specific regulation, that is necessary for this new sector that has shown a great economic impact, as has happened in either in which laws are being adopted in relation to this new type of work model.
Finally, the body in charge of establishing jurisprudence arrived in September 2020, ruling against the interests of the company. The plenary session of the fourth chamber, ruling on the particular case of a delivery man from Madrid, maintains that Glovo is not a “mere intermediary” in the contracting of services between businesses and distributors and that, as associations of distributors and unions argued, glovers are fake self-employed.
A sentence that, pending a new state law on the labor relations of this type of new digital companies, leaves firms such as Glovo, Deliveroo or Uber Eats faced with the situation of having to hire delivery men as employees, thus critically raising their labor costs.
Glovo decides to commit to its glovers to comply with new legislation and avoid new sanctions
Within this legal framework, in January 2021 we learned that, so the company had to register 11,013 delivery people from its workforce. Following this court ruling, The Administration will be responsible for returning the monthly fees for the self-employed assumed by the distributors in their capacity as self-employed workers.
For this reason, and to avoid future sanctions after the entry into force of the call, the company decided to launch “The Couriers Pledge”, a commitment to work with the distributors. This solution was born as a response to the approval in 2021 of the new riders law, and proposes a considerable improvement in the working conditions and social benefits of delivery people.
In this way, with this new commitment, Glovo has proposed a figure of hybrid delivery man, in which they maintain their autonomy while receiving different benefits and an improvement in their working conditions. Thus, The Couriers Pledge proposes: fairer earnings, 360° security, proactive management and better care of the community of riders.
Glovo does not enter the 20s on the right foot
The truth is that 2020, sentence aside, will not be remembered as a great year in the history of Glovo. Between 2018 and 2020 it faced an intense expansion, being its first destination Chile from the hand of Cabify through a “joint venture” in November 2017, and subsequently increased its network of glovers towards Peru, Argentina and . As for Europe, in fact, in 2019 it entered the Polish market and acquired Pizza Portal for 35 million euros, as well as invested in a second technology center in Warsaw.
But in 2020, the company announced the sale of its business in Latam to a giant in the food delivery sector, , in an operation valued at 230 million euros and covering the Latin American markets in which it had a presence: Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. After the closing of this operation, Glovo assured that it would focus on its European and Asian markets, after having also abandoned Turkey, Egypt, Uruguay and Puerto Rico at the beginning of the year. The basic idea: improve the profitability of the company. Finally Glovo left the Latin American market in throughout 2021.
speaking of Spain, Glovo currently has 1,000 employees, 12,000 glovers and nearly 20,000 partners. while worldwide the company currently has 8 million active usersof which about 2 million are in Spain.
Glovo decides to strengthen its markets with greater profitability and its ultra-fast delivery service
After leaving Latin America in March 2021, Glovo decided to strengthen its business in the markets that represent the highest profitability for the company. In this case we are talking about central and eastern Europe with…
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