5

JOKR leaving U.S., 'for now,' to focus on LatAm

 2 years ago
source link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jokr-leaving-u-now-focus-181647546.html
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
neoserver,ios ssh client

JOKR leaving U.S., 'for now,' to focus on LatAm

Christine Hall
Fri, June 17, 2022, 3:16 AM·3 min read
6a39a3fa3fa395cb42d5cc618f4973bf

On-demand food delivery company JOKR said it was shuttering its New York and Boston deliveries as of June 19 and leaving the U.S. market altogether, with co-founder and CEO Ralf Wenzel saying the startup is going to focus on Latin America.

“We have decided to stop our business activities in the U.S. for now, which have lately only accounted for about 5% of our business and with a very differently structured opportunity,” JOKR CEO Ralf Wenzel said in a statement. “Given our unique position in Latin America, we decided to increase our investments in the region organically and by exploring complementary inorganic opportunities, expand our geographic footprint and expand on our service offering to become the leading and most customer serving online grocery business across Latin America, a 1.2tn retail market with less than 10% online penetration.”

T​he New York and Boston operations accounted for nine micro-fulfillment centers out of JOKR’s network of approximately 200 worldwide, according to Bloomberg. The move will also cut about 50 workers from its 950-person office staff.

In JOKR’s one-year lifespan, it has taken in over $430 million, including a $260 million Series B round last November. At that time, the company said its valuation was $1.2 billion and touted itself as “one of the fastest companies to reach unicorn status in history.”

Perhaps it was a little too early for the company to toot its own “horn.” Even though JOKR hadn’t been in New York for that long, the news isn’t much of a surprise, actually, for a few reasons.

First, I spoke to Wenzel in April, and asked him about an Information story from February that discussed JOKR possibly selling its New York operations. At the time, Wenzel called it a rumor, telling me, “We’ve been operating in New York, and there’s no strategic shifts.”

However, he also hinted that the company was looking at its footprint in New York, saying, “In terms of looking into the warehouse distribution, we opened new warehouses and we closed other warehouses as we looked into what was the right location, what was the right proximity to different customers.”


About Joyk


Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK