Flink Takes a $100 Million Cheque After the Crash

Prosus led around US$100 million in new growth capital into Flink on 3 March 2026, after the Berlin grocer said it now makes an EBITDA profit. Btomorrow Ventures, the venture unit of BAT, joined as a new investor beside names already on the register, including REWE.

The cheque lands in a market that spent 2021 promising 10-minute bags and spent 2024 closing the apps that could not pay for them. Flink is still running in Germany and the Netherlands. Gorillas and Getir are not.

A $100 Million Cheque After the Wipeout

Deal tracker CB Insights logs the raise as Series F and says Flink has raised $1.573 billion over 11 rounds from 17 investors. Prosus, the Amsterdam technology investor, first appeared on 6 March 2021 in a Series A and is back as lead five years later. That is a long hold for a category most funds treated as finished.

THE ROUND AT A GLANCE

• The cheque: Around US$100 million of growth capital, dated 3 March 2026.
• The lead: Prosus, with other existing holders, and Btomorrow Ventures as the new name.
• The claim: Flink says it now operates at EBITDA profit after two years of cost cuts.
• The 2024 package: $115 million of equity and $35 million of debt on 17 September 2024, when CB Insights also lists $600 million of revenue.

The March money is meant for more hubs and for the kit that runs them, not for a new country. Flink will stay in Germany and the Netherlands, the two markets it still calls core after the rest of the 2021 map went dark.

Gorillas and Getir Left Germany in 2024

Berlin once had three loud grocery apps on the same streets. Getir bought Gorillas in December 2022, then shut both German brands by mid-May 2024 and pulled back to Turkey. Flink kept its warehouses open and, in the Prosus release, now calls itself the leading quick-commerce operator in Germany and the Netherlands.

FROM THE 2021 BOOM TO THE 2026 CHEQUE

1. 2021: Flink is founded in Berlin; Prosus invests on 6 March in a Series A.
2. 16 May 2022: Flink buys French grocer Cajoo at the top of the cycle.
3. December 2022: Getir buys Gorillas and briefly looks like the consolidator of Europe.
4. 24 May 2023: CB Insights puts Flink’s Series D valuation at $1,075.33 million, well below the 2021 hype.
5. Mid-May 2024: Getir and Gorillas stop German orders; Flink is the dedicated 2021-era app still on those streets.
6. 17 September 2024: Existing holders including Bond, Northzone, Mubadala and REWE put in $115 million of equity and $35 million of debt.
7. 3 March 2026: Prosus leads around US$100 million; Flink says EBITDA is now in the black.

That sequence is why the new money reads as a second chapter rather than a sequel of the first. The operators who sold speed at any cost left. The one that stayed is raising against a profit line, at a valuation CB Insights last printed in public as $1,075.33 million in May 2023, not against a 10-minute slogan.

The 30-Minute, €45 Basket

Flink’s own description of the surviving model is blunt. Average delivery is about 30 minutes. The average basket is over €45. The shopper is doing a top-up run, not a weekly fill of the boot, and the company now treats density and unit cost as the gates, not city-count.

The market has fundamentally evolved. Quick commerce works when it is built on operational discipline and realistic customer expectations. Our strength lies in combining profitable operations with true on-demand delivery.

Julian Dames, CEO of Flink, company statement, 3 March 2026

Dames, a co-founder who now sits as sole Vorstand of Flink SE, is describing a slower product than the one that raised the first billion. About 160 hubs in Germany and the Netherlands reach more than 22.5 million people. Each hub typically holds about 3,000 products. More than 10,000 people work in operations, logistics and technology. Those are warehouse numbers, not launch-party numbers.

India made 10-minute grocery a habit on cheap labour and tight catchments. Germany did not. Pay, rent, and the distance between door codes are higher, and the apps that refused to price that in are gone. Flink’s 30-minute, €45 mix is the version that still has a P&L.

BAT’s Fund Writes a Late-Stage Cheque

Btomorrow Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of BAT, set up in 2020. It manages £350 million across two strategic funds and, on its own site, still describes its sweet spot as pre-Series A to Series B+. Flink’s March round is Series F. That is a late ticket for a fund that usually writes earlier cheques into smaller consumer brands.

WHAT BTOMORROW SAYS IT BUYS

• Functional food and drink: Brands that sell wellbeing and stimulation rather than cigarettes.
• Technology and capabilities: Tools that lift consumer experience and running costs, including logistics.
• Reduced-risk nicotine: Products meant to move smokers toward a smokeless mix.
• Sustainability: Materials and systems that fit BAT’s Better Tomorrow brief.

A grocery last-mile network sits in the second bucket more than the first. Flink already moves fresh food, household goods and the rest of a small supermarket basket through an app that knows what a neighbourhood reorders. For a tobacco group trying to sell new consumer goods through existing routes, that pipe is the asset. Btomorrow’s public portfolio now lists Flink next to functional drinks and packaging startups, which tells you how the fund wants the deal read: consumer access, not a nostalgia bet on 10-minute delivery.

3.5% Online Against a $293 Billion Market

Flink’s pitch for the next dollar is a gap, not a land grab. It puts online grocery at roughly 3.5% in Germany and 6.0% in the Netherlands, against about 14% in the United Kingdom. The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, in its September 2025 Germany retail-foods note, put 2024 grocery retail sales of USD 293 billion. One percentage point of that pile is USD 2.93 billion, which is the arithmetic behind Flink’s line that each point of shift is worth billions.

ONLINE GROCERY SHARE, PER FLINK

IGD’s European channel view still has online as a small slice of grocery even in 2030, so nobody should treat 14% as a German destination on a timer. The useful fact is narrower. Germany’s online grocery share is still a rounding error on a USD 293 billion shelf, and Flink already has 160 hubs sitting under the part of that shelf that lives in dense postcodes.

REWE Stock and the Lieferando Storefront

REWE is not a silent financials line. Prosus names the Cologne grocer as a strategic partner as well as a backer, and REWE’s wholesale arm is how a lot of Flink crates get filled. That tie is the quiet moat. A pure app with no grocer behind it had to buy like a corner shop. Flink can buy like a chain.

Since 2024 the same warehouses have also picked orders that show up on Just Eat Takeaway’s Lieferando app under REWE express branding, after Flink said it had a preferred partnership with the platform. In Germany it then pulled back from spreading itself across every meal app and put the grocery work on Lieferando. The customer can think they are shopping REWE. The bike still leaves a Flink hub.

That is a different company from the 2021 startup that wanted its own brand on every doorbell. It is also why a sale is messy. Anyone who wants the hubs wants the REWE stock agreement and the Lieferando slot, and neither is a freely transferable widget.

Where Will Flink Open Hubs in 2026?

Only in German regions that clear strict profit and density tests, the company said, with more operational spend in the Netherlands as well. That is the whole expansion plan in one filter. No new country. No return to France via the old Cajoo map. Extra dark stores where the existing 30-minute, €45 pattern already pays.

Dames put the same idea in a second line on 3 March 2026: both markets, he said, are entering the phase where the kit is already in place and the next wave of online grocery can be caught rather than built from zero. Whether 2026 actually adds enough dense postcodes to move that 3.5% share is the test the new capital has to pass. The round itself is closed. The hubs still have to earn the next one.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Was Flink’s 2024 Revenue?

CB Insights lists Flink’s 2024 revenue at $600 million, the same year the company took $115 million of equity and $35 million of debt from existing holders. That figure sits beside the March 2026 claim of EBITDA profit and is the last full-year sales number the tracker publishes in public.

Where Is Flink Legally Based?

Flink SE is registered at Brunnenstraße 19-21, 10119 Berlin, with Julian Dames as Vorstand, according to the company’s own imprint. The Handelsregister file sits at Amtsgericht Berlin (Charlottenburg) under HRB 241059 B.

What Stage Does Btomorrow Ventures Usually Fund?

Btomorrow Ventures says it partners with companies from pre-Series A to Series B+, which makes the Flink Series F cheque a late-stage exception rather than a typical ticket. The fund still presents itself as an early-to-mid consumer and technology investor for BAT, not as a growth-equity house.

When Did Prosus First Invest in Flink?

CB Insights dates Prosus’s first Flink cheque to 6 March 2021, as a Series A, and counts only two Prosus rounds in total: that Series A and the Series F on 3 March 2026. Five years separate the two entries on the cap table.