Gorillas further strengthens leadership team on its path to a sustainable and profitable business with two prominent hires

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Sep 08, 2021, 07:07 ET

BERLIN, Sept. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gorillas Technologies GmbH expands its Executive Leadership team with two new prominent hires – Elmar Broscheit as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Adrian Frenzel as Chief Operating Officer (COO), after having appointed HR executive Deena Fox as Global Chief People Officer in early August. With the strong C-Suite, Gorillas is executing its new growth strategy, focusing on building a sustainable and profitable business.

Within the last year, Gorillas has developed a strong, international footprint, operating in nine countries, 55 cities, and employing more than 11,000 people. Now, it is entering its new growth stage: with the goal to become a sustainable and profitable business, Gorillas will focus on its operations, people, product & tech, and environment. With Elmar Broscheit as CFO, Adrian Frenzel as COO, and Deena Fox as CPO, CEO Kagan Sümer assembled a strong Global Executive Leadership team, which will support rolling out the new growth strategy.

Sümer says "Gorillas' explosive growth has been driven by our mission to provide consumers instant access to essential grocery needs. As we enter a new phase of our development, we will focus on building a scalable and robust business infrastructure to support our existing operations and boost our market penetration. I am very excited that Elmar and Adrian are joining us, and I believe that together we will take Gorillas to the next level."

Elmar Broscheit becomes Global Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

With Broscheit Gorillas gains a highly-skilled venture capitalist and angel investor. For over 13 years, he helped entrepreneurs grow multi billion dollar businesses in Australia, Asia and Europe. Broscheit has been involved in the rise of the food delivery sector since the beginning, with key investments in Lieferando (Germany), Takeaway.com (Netherlands) and Daojia (China). Now he will head Gorillas growth financing and all financial strategy and operations globally.

Elmar Broscheit: "Gorillas as a brand has cult status and is disrupting one of the largest consumer industries on a global scale. Our goal is for Gorillas to become a global household brand name for instant gratification of consumer needs. I cannot imagine anything more exciting than this, I just had to be part of it."

Adrian Frenzel becomes Global Chief Operating Officer (COO)

With an impressive career as CEO of Hello Fresh US, Chief Operations Officer at Rocket Internet and as founder of startups EatFirst and Moonfare, Frenzel brings long term experience in building global operational excellence and sustainable growth for growth companies. As a former executive in global growth companies and based on his more than fifteen years of experience in the food, ops and tech sector, he is uniquely qualified to drive Gorillas' growth strategy.

Adrian Frenzel: "Kağan and I first met when he worked for me at Rocket Internet and we have worked together subsequently on multiple projects over the last few years. I have always been very impressed by his strategic vision. I've followed the stories of many young growth companies, but what Kağan and the Gorillas team have accomplished is absolutely extraordinary. Based on my experience in scaling-up startups and in the food industry, my job will be to continue to deliver an outstanding customer experience, whilst growing and building an amazing operations team globally."

About Gorillas
Gorillas, founded by CEO Kağan Sümer, builds an infrastructure for the fastest last-mile delivery of essential human needs. The on-demand delivery startup needs just ten minutes to get a user's desired goods from the cart to the user's desired location. Users of the app benefit from access to more than 2,000 essential items at retail prices for a delivery fee of just 1.80€. By disrupting the shopping and supply chain experience of traditionally slow and inflexible retail companies, Gorillas is shaping new grocery consumer behaviour (Need-Order-Get). With its latest funding round led by repeat investor Coatue Management, Gorillas has raised $290M in its Series B and has become Europe's fastest unicorn ever, only months after closing its $44M Series A. Other investors include DST Global, Tencent, Fifth Wall and Greenoaks (Atlantic Food Labs also participated). In contrast to established gig economy models, Gorillas employs all of its riders and has hired a diverse team of more than 11,000 employees globally – spreading true change in its community. In a little over one year, Gorillas has expanded to more than 55 cities, including Amsterdam, London, Paris, Madrid, New York, Milan and Munich, and built more than 100 warehouses across 9 countries. Currently, Gorillas is available in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Denmark, Spain, the UK, and the United States.