GrubMarket Enters Canada to Build Stronger E-Commerce Network
Marking the start of its expansion into Canada, food tech company GrubMarket has acquired Vancouver-based Funtech Software. The deal also enables GrubMarket to form its first overseas software technology R&D center.
GrubMarket got its start several years ago as one of many companies looking to provide a more efficient farm-to-table service. Tapping into growing consumer interest in higher-quality, more traceable food, it saw an opportunity to build a platform to link up producers to the consumers, restaurants and grocery stores that were buying their products.
On Sept. 13, GrubMarket picked up $120 million in an oversubscribed Series E round of funding from a wide mix of investors. The company had a pre-money valuation of more than $1 billion, and reportedly was looking to grow even more, both in terms of territory and in terms of tech. Enter Funtech.
Founded in 2017, Funtech designs, develops and supports e-commerce storefronts across platforms, including desktop and mobile websites, as well as mobile applications. It also builds robust back-end software systems to manage inventory, orders, pricing, logistics and packing for online orders. Funtech's customer base includes physical grocery stores and supermarkets in Vancouver and eastern Canada, as well as online grocery companies in Canada and United States.
"We are excited to join the GrubMarket team and welcome the opportunities brought forth by GrubMarket's strong network and technology team," said Sam Qi, founder and CEO of Funtech Software. "We are constantly striving to build the best e-commerce system solutions for our customers. We are thrilled to learn that GrubMarket shares these same goals. We sincerely look forward to joining the GrubMarket team and working together to bring Funtech Software to the next level of success."
After the acquisition, Funtech will continue to be managed by its current leadership team.
According to Mike Xu, CEO of San Francisco-based GrubMarket: "Funtech Software is a pioneer in building business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce software for physical and online grocery stores. With its profitable cloud-based software platform, it has developed a reliable, fast-growing customer base in both Canada and the U.S. This acquisition marks the start of our expansion into Canada. It also enables GrubMarket to build an elite software engineering R&D center in Vancouver, leveraging the deep software engineering talent pool available there. Moreover, this acquisition supplements our current software offering to power both B2B and B2C activities in the food supply chain industry."
The deal enables Funtech's B2C e-commerce and online grocery software to be available as part of GrubMarket's software product line, which already includes the proprietary WholesaleWare software suite, the company's software-as-a-service platform that provides food industry wholesalers, distributors, brokers and suppliers with financial management, sales and online ordering features, inventory management, lot traceability and tracking, and automated routing and logistics tools.
Founded in 2014, GrubMarket has grown exponentially this year through numerous acquisitions, thanks to its securing $90 million in 2020 in new funding to drive a growth strategy that Xu believes can someday result in annual sales of $100 billion.
The food tech company now operates in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Missouri, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and British Columbia, with some 40 warehouses nationwide. It plans to expand to additional parts of the United States and Canada, as well as to other countries.
