A dream comes true: Cornershop and Uber partner up with major retailer Cencosud

Contxto – Despite the uncertainty surrounding Cornershop’s corporate governance, nothing seems to be stopping the company from achieving what it sets itself to.

According to América Economía, the company—which seems to be operating under Uber’s control now—established a new strategic partnership with Chilean retail consortium, Cencosud.

What this means is that the supermarket companies operating under Ceconsud’s holding will be available on Cornershop at no delivery charge in Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. 

These retailers include Easy, Jumbo, Wong, Metro, Santa Isabel, Prezunic, and GBarbosa. 

On top of that, Cencosud’s Easy “Mejoramiento del Hogar” products, which include home repair tools, furniture, and more, will be also available in Chile and Colombia. 

UberEats users will also enjoy these perks through their very own application. 

Unrestricted growth for Uber and Cornershop

Matias Videla, Cencosud’s CEO believes that the partnership is part of the company’s efforts to expand the supermarket’s e-commerce reach.

“It offers us an opportunity to grow with a much wider offer for our customers, improve the service and benefit ourselves with the current and future technological developments,” he says. 

A little over a year after the Walmart operation was blocked by Mexico’s antitrust authorities, COFECE, Cornershop seems to be finding new partners to be able to leverage each other’s strength.

A strategy that, due to friction with Walmart, took a turn for the worse recently. In fact, we covered its partnership with Mexico’s Soriana, as the grocery app broke ties with its previous entanglement, Walmart.

Part of the Cencosud’s plans, as mentioned in a report sent to Chile’s Financial Market Commission (CMF for its acronym in Spanish), includes the development of technological projects that offer a better experience to clients and improves business efficiency.

Some other areas of interest of the holding include the investment and development of dark stores, which for e-commerce and pandemics certainly make a lot of sense.

A pretty big deal down South

Now, bear in mind this is no small partnership.

In fact, Cornershop’s CEO, Oskar Hjertonsson said Cencosud’s Jumbo was “the dream partner” ever since the startup launched. “We are very happy for this announcement and what it means. We’re now able to deliver more value to our clients, not only in Chile but in the entire region”.

Cencosud—a publicly-traded company in Chile—surged in its stock price by 2.49 percent since the announcement and positioned itself as the best performing stock of Santiago Stock Exchange’s main index IPSA during 2020, according to La Tercera. 

As its third day increased, Cencosud managed to increase and aggregated 7.63 percent, which despite the macro uncertainty and especially for retailers, is still improving its performance.

-VC