Jüsto, the Mexico City-based online grocery store, continues to run on all cylinders with a goal of penetrating the Latin American market.
The company claims to be the first supermarket in Mexico with no physical store that allows customers to buy groceries directly from its website, or an app, and JFC;sto will deliver the order to the customer's location of choice.
The company raised $65 million in a Series A round led by General Catalyst. The CEO of the company said that the first year of the global epidemic saw the company's revenue increase 16-fold.
Weber told me that the company would use the Series A funding to expand across Mexico and Latin America, a $600 billion opportunity.
The global Pandemic helped a lot in terms of grocery adoption in Latin America.
The few percentage points of adoption helped JFC grow five times in Mexico and achieve a 99.4% fulfillment rate over the past year. Weber expects it to have millions of users by the end of the year.
It entered the market in the country late last year after acquiring Freshmart, and has since announced the opening of its first store in the city. Freshmart launched a discount online supermarket called Ekonofresh to provide even more choice for customers there.
The CEO is fourth from left. Jüsto is an image.
The company launched in Brazil in October of last year and has seen steady growth of between 30% and 40% month over month. There are plans to expand into other cities such as Porto Alegre and Curitiba. Weber expects to be able to move into 20 additional cities in the next several years.
The new funding is led by General Catalyst. New and existing investors, including Tarsadia Capital, Citius, Arago Capital, Foundation Capital and Quiet Capital also participated in the round to bring JFC's total venture capital investment to over $250 million.
Weber said that the company has a mature value proposition as it expands and improves technology to scale up operations. The majority of grocery stores are focused on infrastructure.
Weber is looking at when the right time is to move into those countries, either directly or via acquisitions like Jüsto did in Peru.
The main categories of the company are fruits, vegetables, and cleaning products. Depending on the city that number is up about 2,000.
JFC;sto is focused on personalization in each city. The company is trying to develop relationships with small and medium farmers so that it can buy from them directly.
Mexican online grocer Jüsto raises $65M in General Atlantic-led Series A
The online grocery industry in the U.S. is expected to reach $187 billion by the year 2024, up from $95.8 billion in 2020. Delivery is dominated by incumbents like Walmart and DoorDash, and delivery startups around the world are seeing success as well as in raising venture capital.
Rino recently took in $3 million to deliver groceries in Vietnam, and after raising $22 million, he is now valued at $100 million.
There are a lot of people in this industry, but grocery delivery is also a challenging industry. Zero Grocery shut down just a month after I reported they had raised $12 million. The company stated in a Facebook post that raising has always been the biggest battle they have faced. We have lost the battle.
The delivery of groceries was not easy, especially on the operational side, making it even more challenging as a company grows. JFC;sto has focused on the full basket approach with the goal of people doing all of their shopping via the company rather than just a few convenience items.
While delivery is hard to set up in Latin America, the full basket method is a better way to get to unit economics that are sound according to the senior associate at General Catalyst.
It is not about convenience, but about people buying an order ticket that is $100 to $150 a week.
I kinda dig the Instacart growth plan
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