Sequoia Capital India has led an $18 million seed funding round for rapid groceries delivery start-up VOLY.
VOLY, which is based in Surry Hills, Sydney, was founded last year and launched its service across neighbouring suburbs in July. Since then, the business has already expanded deliveries to 42 inner Sydney suburbs.
The unusually large seed round has been supported by Global Founders Capital and Artesian Capital.
VOLY believes it can disrupt the $122 billion a year Australian groceries industry by delivering directly to homes by electric bikes with a 15-minute delivery promise.
The company is taking on the daunting task of challenging the might of the Coles and Woolworths supermarket duopoly which dominates direct-to-home delivered groceries but it has a different business model and has been set up by founders with experience in the online direct to customer businesses.
The company’s founders and co-chief executives are ex Goldman Sachs employee Mark Heath, who went on to help launch Uber in Australia, and Thibault Henry who built, scaled and sold last-mile delivery business Balto. Balto gained as delivery clients meal kits businesses HelloFresh, Marley Spoon and YouFoodz.
Heath said the business model, including full-time employed delivery and dispatch teams plus the use of electric bikes for delivery, had been designed to cater to demand for quick service delivery.
The business retails most key household products available at major supermarkets – from fresh produce to baby formula to cleaning products – directly delivered seven days a week, 8am to 10pm. The products are supplied at competitive retail prices with no added delivery charge.
Henry said: “We’re doing away with the need to do a weekly grocery shop by providing convenience alongside reliability in a market that offers some of the slowest delivery times in the world.
“By owning our own supply chain, VOLY delivers at blazing fast speed without compromising on price, quality or availability. We source directly from suppliers, store in our own micro-fulfilment centres and deliver using fully employed, and mostly full-time, staff.”
Sequoia India managing director Abheek Anand said the Australian grocery market was a large and profitable space that remained dominated by conventional retailers although on-demand delivery models had been scaled up successfully in other sectors. With VOLY set up by repeat founders who had experience in the space and had achieved good early customer response, it had been an easy decision to back the business.
VOLY expects to use the new capital to expand its team, rapidly scale up operations and expand nationally to key urban areas.
Image: VOLY founders Mark Heath and Thibault Henry.