Barcelona-based on-demand delivery startup Glovo raises €30M Series B led by Rakuten Capital, and Cathay Innovation
Late last month, Spanish media got wind that the Barcelona-based on-demand delivery app Glovo had closed Series B funding, but now the company is making the news official.
Context & Ripple Effects
The official confirmation of Glovo's €30M Series B, led by Rakuten Capital and Cathay Innovation, follows a leak in Spanish media weeks earlier and marks the Barcelona delivery app's step up from regional player to serial fundraiser. The round is the first data point in an arc that runs through the €115M Series C at a reported €300M-plus valuation within a year, the €30M acquisition of Poland's Pizza Portal, and eventually Delivery Hero's majority-stake purchase.
For investors, the bet is that multi-category on-demand delivery — food, groceries, pharmaceuticals — can sustain the capital intensity that food-only rivals were already burning through in Spain's crowded market.
First-order effects
- Glovo gets the war chest to expand beyond its Spanish home market while Rakuten Capital and Cathay Innovation take early positions ahead of the larger rounds that followed.
Second-order effects
- The capital cadence this round set off — Series C, then Mubadala's €150M Series E and the €450M Series F — forced competing Spanish and European delivery apps to keep raising or sell, culminating in Delivery Hero taking a ~39.4% stake at a €2.3B valuation (Delivery Hero's majority stake).
Third-order effects
- The rider-contract model underpinning these economics has since collided with Spanish labor law: Glovo allegedly denied contracts to more than 10,600 riders under the riders' law and now faces roughly €267M in unpaid social security contributions, with its planned conversion of Spanish couriers to employees expected to cost Delivery Hero about €100M in 2025 earnings — meaning the platform's long-term margins depend as much on labor regulation as on fundraising.
The trend: European on-demand delivery is consolidating around a few heavily capitalized platforms whose unit economics are increasingly dictated by labor regulation rather than venture funding.