Gorillas probably loses investor

Doordash actually wanted to contribute 400 million US dollars to the next round of financing, but now the American company is said to have backed out. Both Doordash and Gorillas have not commented on the information.

According to information from Bloomberg the Berlin start-up Gorillass has lost an investor who wanted to contribute 400 million US dollars to the next financing round. This would have increased the valuation to 2.5 billion US dollars. The investor would have been the American delivery service Doordash. The two companies are said to have disagreed on Gorillas' future strategy. Doordash insisted that the expansion into the American market should be approached slowly and that the focus should first be on reducing losses in Europe.

Gorillas is still in the red and internal documents show that the number of orders and users is declining: according to information from Capital the number of active customers has stopped growing since the beginning of July and has fallen by five percent. Orders per warehouse have also fallen or stagnated. However, according to calculations, the Berliners need 1,100 orders per warehouse every day to achieve a positive contribution margin. But since July, even the successful warehouses have remained at 900 orders per day, while Gorillas is constantly opening new locations, which only have a negative impact on the start-up's figures, especially at the beginning. By the end of the year, the number of warehouses should have grown to 500, compared to 170 at present.

A letter of intent is said to have been signed between Doordash and Gorillas, as Bloomberg reports. The Americans are now said to have canceled the contract. The financing round was to total between 800 and 900 million US dollars, with Doordash as the main investor. Both companies declined to comment on the information from Bloomberg or Capital. Most recently, there were rumors of a takeover of Gorillas by Doordash, the American company wants to enter the German delivery services market itself.