BurdaPrincipal Investments (BPI), the growth capital arm of media and tech company Hubert Burda Media, has invested in Munich based start-up arive which is transforming consumer shopping habits by delivering high-end consumer brands to their doors in hours.

The German start-up has raised $20 million in Series A funding with Balderton Capital leading the round. Next to BPI, Global Founders Capital as well as previous investors La Famiglia and 468 Capital participated in the round which was led by Balderton Capital.

Delivering premium products to busy urban consumers

Arive serves the busy and impatient urban consumer. While groceries can be delivered within minutes and hours, consumers need to wait up to three days to receive a consumer product ordered online. Arive redesigned what delivery can be by providing an experience commerce (“x-commerce”) service and improves the end-to-end shopping process. Customers can shop products from categories like tech, selfcare, beauty, fitness and jewellery. Brands already listed in the arive app are Apple, Bose, Lego and Lululemon, among others.

So far, arive has focused on the German cities Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich where it was also founded in summer 2021. The startup will use the fresh money to expand its revolutionary new shopping model across Germany and for international expansion. In addition, the funding will be used to further develop the app and delivery experience following the aim to create the high-end experience customers are looking for.

“Arive tackles an unmet need of premium brands to provide an exclusive and premium shopping experience in the online world. We strongly believe in this new shopping model and are happy to be backing Linus and Max on their journey to build Europe’s leading experience commerce platform.”

Julian von Eckartsberg, Managing Director Europe at BPI 

Experience platform for customers and brands

Linus Fries and Maximilian Reeker are the founders of arive. For them it’s not only relevant to provide a premium shopping experience for their customers. They also value sustainability: For this reason, light electric vehicles are used to rapidly fulfill orders. And brands which want to be part of the arive app are vetted based on criteria which include sustainability and brand values. Once included, brands benefit from curation and editorial content, from a great reach – around 100,000 app store downloads – access to data and exclusive influencer collaborations.