Voly instant grocery start-up raises AU$18million in seed round
Voly, the Australian instant online grocery supermarket, has raised AU$18million in a seed round led by Sequoia Capital India.
Also including increased backing from Global Founders Capital and Australian-based Artesian Capital, the funding will enable Voly to expand its team, increase operations in key urban centres and start a national rollout.
Mark Heath, co-chief executive and co-founder of Voly, said: “Voly is here to completely change the way people shop for groceries by giving Australians back their most precious resource, time. Our model, from a fully employed delivery and dispatch team to the way we use electric bikes to deliver, is designed around the way people live. We firmly believe that our customers have a better experience when our riders and other staff are part of the company, working with us.”
Heath helped launch Uber in Australia after a career at Goldman Sachs and co-founder Thibault Henry built, scaled and sold Balto, which was a B2B last-mile business with clients such as HelloFresh, Marley Spoon and YouFoodz. Voly’s management team includes chief technology officer Anthony Rey, head of procurement Lyana Labrode and head of marketing Josh Peacock.
Henry added: “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. We source directly from suppliers, store in our own micro-fulfilment centres and deliver using fully employed and mostly full-time staff. Voly is the supermarket of the future that is built around our customers, not the other way around.”
