On-demand delivery giant Doordash has signed a deal to acquire Finnish delivery startup Wolt. The deal would be an all-stock transaction that is valued at USD 8.1 billion. Doordash said that acquisition is part of its efforts to give a push to the company’s international expansion. Wolt, which started as a food delivery platform, has now expanded into groceries and retail. The startup has around 4,000 employees and is operating in 23 countries. Wolt had announced in January that it had crossed the mark of 10 million users. Once the deal is closed, DoorDash International will be run by Wolt founder and chief executive officer Miki Kuusi. The deal is expected to be closed in the second half of 2022.
The announcement about the acquisition coincides with the company’s third-quarter earnings report. The third-quarter earnings of the company are not very impressive. It reported a net loss of USD 101 million. This loss is more than double what it reported in the same quarter a year ago. The loss of DoorDash in the third quarter of 2020 was USD 43 million. It is important to mention that just like other delivery services, DoorDash too benefitted because of the stay-at-home trends, which started after the coronavirus pandemic forced people to follow the norms of social distancing. People got dependent on these delivery services as they seemed to be the only way to minimize the spread of Covid-19.
DoorDash said that it witnessed a downfall in the number of new consumers in this quarter when compared to the highest levels that the company witnessed in 2020 when coronavirus was at its peak. The number of new users in 2020 was well above what the company had added in 2019. The number of total orders placed on the app reached 347 million, up by around 47 percent. According to the company, consumers were spending much more in that quarter. Also, there were around 3 million people who provide services in the quarter and earned over USD 2.8 billion.
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