Five years ago, investors would not answer Nazim Salur’s calls. Now his company, Getir, is the largest fast grocery delivery company in Europe. After the Turkish startup acquired its German rival Gorillas last month, the company was valued at $8.8 billion.
Getir first expanded into Europe via London in 2021, as a post-pandemic instant grocery gold rush was in full swing. Investors were confident that lockdown habits would continue and consumers would continue to demand groceries delivered straight to their doorstep. Since 2020, investors have flooded the global industry with more than $5 billion in funding. Those billions funded the dramatic expansion of an industry that promises a new era of ultimate convenience: groceries delivered to your doorstep in less than 10 minutes. In Europe alone, companies have launched between 2020 and 2021, including Gorillas, Weezy, Blok, Dija, Fancy and Cajoo.
According to a statement from a delivery app, all those companies have since disappeared or been absorbed by Europe’s three largest players: Getir, Flink and GoPuff. Since Getir swallowed Gorillas in December, the company’s yellow and purple mopeds can be found on roads in seven European countries. The second largest competitor, the German Flink, is active in three. The American competition, GoPuff, has recently downsized and now only operates in France and the UK. Getir has received funding from Abu Dhabi state investor Mubadala and investment firms Sequoia and Tiger Global to boost its growth.
The company’s rise from London to become Europe’s largest supplier of ready meals is due to Getir’s experience in the home market, says managing director in Europe, Turancan Salur. “We are the industry pioneers,” he says. Getir may be new to Europe, but it has been operating in Turkey for eight years and already claims to be profitable in Istanbul. As a private company, Getir does not publish financial reports. “We have a lot of experience there and we have faced quite a few difficult situations and economic difficulties,” says Salur.
While the new entrants in Europe struggled with IT problems related to logistics management, Getir said he already had tailor-made solutions ready. “We actually had a preview of the future, while our competitors didn’t.”
Getir’s dominance is reflected in the number of downloads. The company’s app has been downloaded 28 million times worldwide on Android phones, according to AppRadar data that doesn’t count iPhone installs. That figure far exceeds the number of downloads of the GoPuff app, which has been installed 5.4 million times. And Getir not only wins over consumers, couriers are also switching to the company. “From my personal experience, Getir is so much better than relying entirely on Deliveroo or UberEats,” says Ian Morrison, a London-based courier who has been working for Getir in London since June 2021. He is paid £11.05 ($13) an hour, and receives holiday and sick pay. The company provides him with an electric moped to ride during his shifts and covers his insurance.
Nevertheless, Getir is not perfect, he emphasizes. Compared to when he joined, he has to work more hours to receive the same pay due to changes in the bonus system. He also describes the pressure on his warehouse to deliver quickly, which means the people packing orders are more likely to make mistakes, resulting in wrong or missing items.
