LatamList – Jüsto, the leading e-grocer in Latin America, recently raised $12M in a Pre-Series A round. This funding will help the online supermarket continue its expansion throughout the region while responding to the sharp rise in demand driven by the global pandemic.
This round is mostly comprised of follow-on investments from Jüsto’s $10M seed round in November 2019. These investors include Foundation Capital, Mountain Nazca, and FEMSA Ventures, with participation from H20 Capital, SV Latam, and S7V among others.
According to a press release, the COVID-19 pandemic transformed consumer buying habits virtually overnight as online grocery shopping became nearly a universal lifeline due to lockdowns and social distancing.
As the first supermarket with no physical stores in Mexico, Jüsto customers buy their groceries directly from the platform and get them delivered right to their doorstep. Since the beginning of COVID-19, Jüsto has seen 5x growth in orders.
A Nielsen study discovered that 11% of respondents purchased fresh groceries online for the first time during the pandemic, and 70% are likely to do so again within the next 12 months.
“Despite Covid-19 dramatically accelerating the curve of adoption of e-commerce, the penetration rate of e-grocers is still less than 1% in Latam,” said Ricardo Weder, Jüsto’s founder and CEO. “That means there’s an enormous opportunity—and all the right conditions—to disrupt the grocery industry in Latin America. We have the technology, talent, and infrastructure to scale our expansion to more cities in Mexico and begin our international expansion, beginning with Colombia.”
