Getir, the Istanbul-based grocery delivery app, has raised $ 550 million in new funding, tripling its valuation to $ 7.5 billion, including new capital, just three months after it was last funded.

The deal means that seven-year-old Getir, which only started expanding outside of Turkey in January and now plans to launch in the United States this year, is worth more than the food delivery apps Deliveroo and Grubhub, as well as UK supermarkets WM Morrison and Marks. and Spencer.

Investors are embarking on the latest trend in fast grocery delivery e-commerce. Getir pioneered the concept of delivering mini-market items in as little as 10 minutes in Turkey several years ago, but many imitators have emerged over the past year fueled by coronavirus lockdowns.

“The reason we have raised so frequently is that we have decided to go to the United States this year rather than later,” said Nazım Salur, general manager of Getir. “Suddenly a lot of clones appear everywhere. If we don’t mind the business, others will.

The latest round brings Getir’s total funding over the past four months to almost $ 1 billion.

DisruptAD and Mubadala Investment Company, both of which are branches of the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, as well as the Silicon Valley-based Silver Lake fund, join Getir as new investors, alongside existing backers Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital.

Competition in the instant grocery market is intensifying.

Also on Friday, Getir’s Berlin competitor Flink announced that it had raised $ 240 million in new capital from investors such as Prosus, Bond and Mubadala Capital. Flink was launched just four months ago and already operates in more than 18 cities.

Another European rival of Getir, Gorillas, is also said to be raising funds at a multibillion dollar valuation, just months after his last round.

In March, Gopuff, the US-based delivery app offering “immediate daily needs,” raised $ 1.2 billion at a valuation of nearly $ 9 billion from investors including SoftBank Vision Fund and D1 Capital, to fuel its expansion in Europe.

Despite warnings from food delivery veterans that the fast delivery model remains unproven and unprofitable, its investors are excited about the unprecedented growth rates. Getir, which has now opened 28 delivery centers in London and plans to expand to Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin this month, quintupled its revenue last year and is expected to do so again in 2021, according to Salur.

Getir hopes to launch in three major US cities later this year, with more to follow in 2021.

Defying the many skeptics surrounding its nascent industry, Salur insists that Getir’s business model can work “wherever there is pizza delivered.” He predicts that in less than 10 years, more than half of grocery orders in many countries will go online.

Salur also believes that the current approach of reserving delivery slots days in advance, as traditional supermarkets and grocery delivery pioneers such as Ocado typically offer, will soon be eclipsed by the model. de Getir of hundreds of “dark shops” and electric mopeds.

“The scheduled delivery is BlackBerry,” Salur said. “We are the iPhone.”

Salur, now 59, is one of the five co-founders of Getir. He worked in furniture production and then as a real estate broker for used industrial facilities before launching his first start-up, the Turkish taxi app BiTaksi, in 2013.

After BiTaksi consistently hit Salur’s goal of a three-minute wait, at the end of 2014, he came up with the idea of ​​delivering a limited selection of groceries to customers in 10 minutes.

“Ten minutes is almost now,” he said. “It’s something else, it creates its own clientele.

Back then, even the fastest ecommerce services took at least 30 minutes and up to a few days to arrive. But when Salur polled his friends about the 10-minute concept, they dismissed it as unnecessary or unsustainable.

“We got the idea when everyone thought it was a silly idea,” said Salur. “We believed in it, shed blood and tears for many years. Now, many are putting money after that.

Despite the sudden influx of capital, Salur insists Getir will spend it prudently. “We’re not a spoiled Silicon Valley startup with a lot of money to throw away,” he said.

While Getir’s service may seem straightforward to consumers – offering a limited selection of around 1,500 items from “micro-distribution centers” dotted around the city – Salur insists it’s hard to replicate.

“There are at least a few thousand details about our business and the clones believe there are a few hundred,” he said. “We have the most knowledge and the most data. ”

In its home market, Turkey, where it now has nearly 500 dark stores in 30 cities, Getir has already expanded to offer a larger selection of large warehouses – albeit in more than 10 minutes – and hot meals. .

“We’re a long-term grocery game,” Salur said. “We [will] win people’s hearts and minds in 10 minutes, get under the skin, and later, if people need more of us, we can diversify our offerings.