Dubai's Jabbar and Greece's VentureFriends secure major victories following InstaShop's departure
Last updated on Aug 30, 2020, at 5:20 PM GMT
In a significant move for the grocery delivery marketplace, Dubai-based InstaShop has been sold to Delivery Hero for a whopping $360 million. This acquisition marks Delivery Hero's biggest investment in the Middle East & North Africa, excluding Turkey.
Zubair Naeem Paracha, the author of this article and the founder of our tech company, reports on this exciting development. Based in Lahore, Pakistan, Paracha is a startup enthusiast and can be reached on LinkedIn, Twitter, or at zubair [at] our website [dot] com.
InstaShop, originally founded by John Tsioris and Ioanna Angelidaki, started with an initial investment of $365,000 from Dubai-based Jabbar Internet Group and Greek VC firm VentureFriends. Over time, they managed to raise between $7 to $10 million in total before exiting to Delivery Hero.
Before the acquisition, Jabbar Internet Group and VentureFriends, along with an undisclosed investment from ecommerce company Souq, had backed InstaShop. The founders, Tsioris and Angelidaki, are of Greek descent, which may have influenced VentureFriends' decision to invest.
VentureFriends, a Greek investment firm started by Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos in 2016, primarily invests in Europe but made their first investment in MENA with InstaShop. Apostolakis attributes InstaShop's success to its team and the pandemic's impact on the company's valuation.
The sale price includes $90 million in earnouts, linked with InstaShop's team meeting growth and profitability goals. The founders are expected to have owned a large double-digit stake in the company at the time of the sale.
The acquisition of InstaShop has been celebrated widely in Greece, and VentureFriends has also invested in Dubai-based on-demand cleaning services Justmop. It's worth noting that Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury, co-founders of Jabbar, had previously sold Maktoob to Yahoo for $164 million in 2009.
This article was initially published with a suggestion that VentureFriends invests in Greek startups. However, it was corrected to reflect that they invest all around Europe and are also interested in the UAE.
InstaShop's main engineering office is located in Athens, Greece, adding to the excitement of this acquisition in the Greek tech scene.
