Weee!, an online grocery delivery platform that offers Hispanic and Asian foods speciality products and everyday staples, announced that it has secured a massive $425M funding in Series E round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
Greyhound Capital also participated in this round alongside the company’s existing investors.
To date, the company has raised $800M+ in funding from Arena Holdings, Blackstone, DST Global, Goodwater Capital, Greyhound Capital, iFly.vc, Lightspeed Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund II, Tiger Global, VMG, and XVC.
How will the funding be used?
The capital will enable Weee! to expand its platform offering across new and existing ethnicities, and scale grocery as well as food delivery services to new geographies.
Further, the company plans to advance warehouse automation and AI innovations to improve customer experience.
“We’ve seen tremendous growth in 2021, even though the easing of COVID-19 related pressures, as our customers continue to discover affordable access to a wide array of exciting products and food online. We look forward to building on that momentum as we add depth to our investor base with Softbank’s global e-commerce expertise, and welcome them to the board,” says Larry Liu, founder, and CEO of Weee!
“Their partnership will further enable Weee! to serve customers in the $360+ billion ethnic groceries and food market,” he adds.
Sources hard-to-find goods
Founded by Larry Liu in 2015, Weee! is a California-based online grocery that delivers more than 10,000 locally sourced and hard-to-find goods from around the globe directly to customers.
The company is on the mission to enable affordable access to groceries for every home in North America.
The company continues to expand its Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian, and Latin offerings for customers, adding more than 500 new products per week, and plans to expand to other ethnicities in the future.
The US company also partnered with more than 1,000 restaurants to offer authentic food-at-home options for customers. The company specializes in the fields of eCommerce, grocery delivery, social commerce, retail, and Asian grocery.
“The market for ethnic groceries and food is massively underserved in the U.S., and we believe that Weee! is in a prime position to meet the demands of customers,” said Lydia Jett, Managing Partner at Softbank Investment Advisors, who will join Weee!’s Board of Directors as part of the Series E.
She adds, “Weee!’s strong execution capabilities and reach across multiple ethnic groups, coupled with a unique customer experience model leveraging AI, has enabled it to scale effectively in a rapidly evolving grocery market. We are delighted to partner with Larry Liu and the team to support their next phase of expansion.”
The app is available on both iOS App Store and Android Google Play Store.
