Kozmo II – The Sequel: A Look at App Store Data for Same-Day Delivery Services

Kozmo.com was among the biggest, costliest venture-backed startup failures of all time. It was a beloved service but unfortunately selling a $4 pint of Ben & Jerry’s for $3 is not a business model you can “make up in volume”.  But it’s 2014 and welcome to Kozmo II: The Sequel.  This time, a host of new smartphone apps have cropped up hoping to once again capitalize on the promise of same-day delivery.

In the running to win share of the same-day delivery market are companies both public and private. Among the venture-backed startups offering same-day delivery apps of goods including food and grocery are Instacart, TaskRabbit (through its DeliveryNow service) and Postmates. eBay, Amazon and Google have also launched apps and there is the possibility that Uber may one day turn to the same-day delivery space as well.  In fact, eBay has actually acquired Shutl and Google has acquired BufferBox to further their delivery ambitions.

So as the space becomes crowded, we wanted to take a look at how the same-day delivery apps were trending in their App Store categories. Some observations below.

• In February, Postmates raised a $16M Series B round from investors including Spark Capital, Matrix Partners and SoftTech VC. The app provides same-day courier service for food delivery, groceries as well as office supplies. And over the past five months, the Postmates app has consistently trended in the top 100-ranked ‘Food & Drink’ apps.

• Google Shopping Express, eBay Now and AmazonFresh all operate in the ‘Lifestyle’ category of the App Store. Within the category, Google’s app has trended ahead of the two commerce giants, which have seen a fluctuating rank over the period.

• Same-day grocery service Instacart is backed by $11M from investors including Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures and Canaan Partners. Since the start of the new year, Instacart’s App Store rank has trended up, reaching as high as the top 300-ranked ‘Lifestyle’ apps but it has been relatively volatile showing no particular upward or downward trend.

• Shasta Ventures-backed TaskRabbit added ‘Deliver Now’ as an extension of its services in June 2012. Within the ‘Social Networking’ category, the app has not seen any sustained ranking momentum over the past few months.  This may be due to the genre classification as social networking is a tough area to rank. That said, TaskRabbit has been restructuring and rethinking its business model over time and so the seeming lack of momentum may also be evidence of that.

We will continue to monitor the mobile app data for any noteworthy shifts in the same-day delivery market. If you’d like to to stay abreast of additional mobile app store analyses and fast moving publishers, sign up for our free mobile app momentum newsletter.