Innovation in time of crisis, that’s what we all need right now! This was another intense week of activities in the world of e-commerce! A lot of news!!!
- Amazon stops accepting new online grocery customers
- Instagram continues push into e-commerce with shoppable stories and pictures
- Rappi, LATAM on-demand delivery unicorn start delivery robots pilot
- New CEO at eBay
- Mondelez faces 'unprecedented demand’ online for snacks during coronavirus, are you eating too many Oreos?
- Amazon investment in Deliveroo UK is approved
- Dark stores become a reality at Kroger and Whole food, others will follow!
- Pony.ai teams up with e-com site Yamibuy to launch a driverless car delivery service using.
- Our Stock of the week is …
- FarEye raises $25M to grow its logistics SaaS startup
- Gousto, a UK meal-kit service, raises another $41M
Amazon stops accepting new online grocery customers amid surging demand
With demand increase for online orders +60% the company decided to not take new customers and ensure it’s servicing the existing ones! I think this shows just how customer-centric the company is. Even after announcing 175K hiring for warehouses and distribution, the demand for online grocery is so high that Amazon is putting new customers in the waiting list.
Check out the details HERE.
Instagram partners with LA’s ChowNow to make food pics and stories shoppable
Instagram has been already taking a few steps to push into e-commerce without major impact yet but it has huge potential with shoppable stories and pics! It’s time to make a strong push into social commerce for Instagram Giant. COVID19 will enhance social commerce trends and Shopentainment concepts.
Read more about shoppable food on Instagram HERE.
Colombia’s Rappi trials robots to deliver restaurant food to homes
While delivery bots are becoming a reality in certain areas of the world like China, these have proven already the value they bring. This time, it’s the Colombian Unicorn Rappi which made the announcement of a partnership with Kiwibot to launch these delivery robots in Latin America.
Do you know what these robots are capable? Learn it HERE.
eBay names Walmart exec Jamie Iannone CEO
After a couple of month of search, eBay has a new CEO and he is coming from Walmart but was previously an eBay employee as well. I’m very curious to know what he will do to transform the organization.
Details can be found HERE.
Mondelez faces 'unprecedented demand’ online for snacks during coronavirus
If you are home and you have kids and you are bored, what do you do? You eat!! and usually you eat bad stuff! If you have been eating a lot of Oreos these days, you are one of the contributor of this story and huge growth of Mondelez online sales.
Learn more about Mondelez’s unprecedented demand HERE.
Amazon Gets Go Ahead for U.K. Food-Delivery Investment, Thanks to Coronavirus
After months and month of negotiation, Amazon finally got the OK on the investment in Deliveroo, I think this investment is just a first step for full acquisition in order to reinforce the strength of Amazon delivery network in Europe & UK.
THIS is a must-read in this topic.
To deal with online demand, Whole Foods turns physical locations into ‘dark stores’
Dark stores have been mentioned as one of the future trends of retail, that future trend is probably now an actual immediate trend which might become of the critical change that we see in the retail industry. But what is a dark store? It’s basically a warehouse for picking products which are going to be delivered to a consumer from a strategic location and existing real estate of a company. In this case Whole food temporarily shut down its Manhattan Bryant Park location to use the store only to fulfill Prime grocery deliveries online Kroger did the same in Cincinnati where the stores are only for pick up. You can expect to have more and more retailers and grocers using this model.
Learn more about the dark stores HERE.
Chinese driverless car firm launches autonomous deliveries in California as lockdown continues
Chinese driverless car start-up Pony.ai has launched a delivery service in Irvine, California using its autonomous vehicles as people remain stuck at home due to the coronavirus outbreak. If you live in Irvine, you can order items from Yamibuy e-commerce site and get it delivered with an autonomous vehicle, the near future of delivery will be definitely autonomous.
Check out the details HERE.
Stock of the week: Amazon
If one company is well prepared in times of COVID, it’s AMAZON!! No surprise the stock is at sky high record level and still increasing, COVID will reinforce Amazon Dominance… because…
…You can’t go out to buy stuff, you have Amazon Marketplace
…You can’t go out to buy food, you have Amazon Fresh
…You want to launch a new startup idea, company or increase your digital solutions, you have Amazon Web Services
…You want to watch a movie or series, you have Amazon Prime Video
…You want to do grocery shopping practicing social Distancing, you have Amazon Go
…Want to listen Music while home, Amazon Music
…Your kids are bored, put them in front of twitch watching other playing video games
…You want to avoid people in warehouse, you have Amazon robotics
And if you end up being alone at home in quarantine, you can still speak to Alexa!
It seems that the diversification of the portfolio for the last 26 years has been prepared for COVID19, did Jeff know? (just kidding and no conspiration theory please).
StartUps of the week:
India’s FarEye raises $25M to grow its logistics SaaS startup in international markets
Far Eye is one of the logistics software companies to watch when it comes to last-mile delivery e-commerce startups. I personally used the technology in one project and this is a company to keep an eye on. Congrats to the team!
Read more about the success HERE.
Gousto, a UK meal-kit service, raises another $41M as business booms under lockdown
Meal kits are getting more and more popular, with people being limited for shopping and being lazy also probably, meal kits are on the rise and funding is coming to startups in the space.
Check out Gousto’s story HERE.
Nabil Malouli is VP, Global E-commerce for DHL Supply Chain where he leads the innovation, strategy and product development of its e-commerce fulfilment and last-mile solutions.
Photo: Pixabay