October brought major retail tech announcements from Tesco/Gorillas, Asos, Kroger/Ocado Group, Asda, Amazon, Aldi Nord, and Instacart.

Good month for…

Rapid grocery delivery venture, Gorillas, raised close to $1 billion in a Series C funding round. 

This was led by Delivery Hero, and included further investments by existing investors Coatue Management, DST Global, Tencent, Atlantic Food Labs, Fifth Wall, Greenoaks, A*, and new backers G Squared, Alanda Capital, Macquarie Capital, MSA Capital and Thrive Capital. 

It came seven months after Gorillas bagged $290 million in Series B funding, taking its valuation past the $1 billion mark.

US-based e-commerce delivery startup Pandion announced $30 million in new funding, consisting of a $22.5 million Series A and a $7.5 million add-on investment.

The startup’s founder and CEO is Scott Ruffin, who was the head of Amazon Air for almost five years. 

He has also served as Vice President and Head of Walmart's e-commerce transportation business.

Digital supply chain and freight platform venture, Beacon, raised over $50 million in a Series B round, led by Northstar.vc. 

Bad month for…

Tesco's website and app were offline during Saturday, 23rd October and Sunday, 24th October due to a major system outage.

Also this month…

Tesco launched its first high street checkout-free store.

As we reported in July, named GetGo, this can be found in High Holborn, on the edge of the City of London.

Tesco also launched a pilot with Gorillas.

The retailer’s customers will be able to order Tesco products to their doors, within 10 minutes, via the Gorillas app.

The latter will set up micro-fulfilment sites at five large Tesco stores to handle the deliveries. The first store to be involved in the partnership is in Thornton Heath, London.

America's largest grocery retailer, Kroger, was set to offer more people Kroger Delivery through the addition of five new customer fulfilment centres powered by Ocado Group.

It was planning to enter the northeast market and expand in California and Florida.

UK-based FinTech venture Mode launched its Open Banking payments and Bitcoin rewards solution with The Hut Group’s THG Ingenuity tech platform.

Nick Beighton said he was stepping down as Asos CEO. 

Mat Dunn, CFO, was taking on the additional role of Chief Operating Officer and leading the business on a day to day basis, with Katy Mecklenburgh, currently Director of Group Finance, acting as Interim CFO.

Ian Dyson became Chair, replacing Adam Crozier whose decision to depart the fast fashion pureplay was previously announced.

Asda extended its Express Delivery service to 96 stores.

The service gives customers access to the retailer’s full online range of more than 30,000 grocery products for delivery within one hour, if they live within a three mile radius of a participating store and order up to 70 items.

Instacart acquired FoodStorm, a SaaS order management system that powers end-to-end order-ahead and catering experiences for grocery retailers. 

Ocado Group announced a partnership with and £10 million investment in startup Wayve as it looked to accelerate the development of autonomous grocery deliveries for complex urban environments.

This closely followed Asda’s tie up with Wayve.

Amazon opened the doors to the first Amazon 4-star store outside of the US. 

Situated in Bluewater, this offers a range of products that are rated four stars and above, are top sellers, or are trending on Amazon’s UK site, including consumer electronics, toys, games, books, kitchen, and home.

Customers can purchase online and collect orders at the store as soon as the next day. It also offers parcel free, label free returns for items purchased both in store and online.

Digital price tags are located alongside each product with the item price, average star rating, and the number of customer reviews.

Amazon account holders will pay the price as they would on the UK site. Prime members will receive exclusive perks and deals throughout the store. 

Fashion retailer, boohoo group, launched a Debenhams online marketplace, powered by Mirakl technology. 

Aldi Nord said it would test out a checkout free store in Utrecht, The Netherlands, early next year, powered by Trigo technology.

To enter, customers will need to scan a QR code, with all selected items being tracked by a combination of shelf sensors and camera technology. 

These details are then sent to a customer app, enabling a contactless and automatic payment process when leaving the store.