Same-day personal shopper service Buymie has raised €7m (£6m) in a funding round.
The latest funding boost was led by the company’s existing largest backers, including Grosvenor Food & AgTech, Act Venture Capital, Sure Valley Ventures, Haatch Ventures and HBAN, who took part in an €8m (£6.8m) finance raise in 2020.
Other notable investors in the latest round include Keith Weed CBE, former marketing chief for Unilever, and Eamonn Quinn, former deputy chairman of the Superquinn Group.
“This capital will allow the business to continue its focus on developing best-in-class technology,” said Buymie CEO and co-founder Devan Hughes, “while helping our retail partners transform their online and in-store capabilities to better serve their customers and unlock growth opportunities.”
In March, Buymie started working with Asda to launch the supermarket’s one-hour grocery delivery service, which allows users to communicate directly with the ‘personal shopper’ picking their orders. The Asda Buymie service is live in selected postcodes within a three-mile radius of 10 Asda stores in Leeds and Bristol.
Buymie arrived in the UK in May 2020, in partnership with Co-op. It later listed Asda and Tesco products on its app, initially without any involvement from those supermarkets. In Ireland, the company works with retail partners Dunnes Stores and Lidl.
Buymie said its service is now available to two million households across Dublin, Limerick, Cork and Galway, and Leeds and Bristol in the UK. The service has now been used by one in eight households across Dublin.
The business has expanded since its founding in 2016 to a team of more than 70 with a network of 400 personal shoppers. The company has raised a total of €18.2m (£15.5m) to date, and is considering expansion into 200 cities in the UK and Ireland.
“The grocery retail landscape is being transformed by platform technology,” said investor Keith Weed, who sits on the board of directors of both Sainsbury’s and WPP.
“It is very clear that the growth and margin opportunities of the future for retailers will be unlocked through capabilities facilitated by businesses and technology like Buymie,” he added.
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