The important thing is not to have the merchandise in 15 minutes, but to pay the most adjusted price possible for quality products. This is the philosophy with which Borja Solé, Ruben Vilar and Carlos Costa founded the online supermarket Buo in 2021. They prefer a customer who makes a calm, planned purchase, prioritizing price and quality above all else, and whose delivery time is between two and three days to get the best possible price. "We eliminate all unnecessary intermediaries in the production chain and suppress the main frictions that online shopping had until now: higher prices, shipping costs, and minimum orders," explains Borja Solé, co-founder of Buo.
To do this, the platform allows users to create buying groups to unify orders and request products at more adjusted prices. "Buo brings its customers together in groups ---which can be a minimum of two buyers---, which allows them to have greater negotiating power when negotiating prices with suppliers and achieve final prices that are on average 30% cheaper," explain the project managers.
Established in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, the company has just closed a two-million-euro financing round to face its growth, initially with the opening of the service next July in Madrid. In addition, it has recently closed a long-term operational agreement with Glovo, which will not only provide them with logistical synergies but also strategic knowledge in terms of expansion and markets that will allow them to grow faster as a company.
The financing round included participation from the Mangrove Capital Partners fund (with portfolio companies such as Wix, Skype, or Wallapop, among others) and investors such as Didac Lee, Óscar Pierre, Inés Urés, and Roger Solé. Buo's new partner, the Mangrove fund, understands the investment as a step in the strategy of promoting social e-commerce, "a booming trend in Europe," according to Yannick Oswald, partner at Mangrove, which is why "this is the best possible moment for a company like Buo, which offers a clear value proposition in times when inflation dominates our daily lives."
Buo's business model also breaks the mold in delivery: shipments are not made to customers' homes, but rather go to collection points located a maximum of five minutes from users' homes, and delivery is not immediate. In the words of the founders: "We have more than 50 collection points throughout the city so that users can pick up their purchase for free within five minutes of their home." Thanks to this and the elimination of intermediaries within the chain, Buo achieves final prices below those of large supermarket chains.