Uber buys alcohol delivery major Drizly for $1.1billion

Uber, the ride-hailing service, acquired the alcohol delivery giant Drizly for $1.1 billion. The deal occurred after the pandemic hit the Uber taxis negatively and Uber re-invested in food delivery service. Drizly will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Uber on completion of the transaction. Its services will add to Uber Eats, Uber's food delivery app, while maintaining a separate Drizly app.

"By bringing Drizly into the Uber family, we can accelerate that trajectory by exposing it to the Uber audience and expanding its geographic presence into our global footprint in the years ahead," said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Uber informed that it would sell $900 million worth of stocks for Drizly.

Drizly co-founder and CEO Cory Rellas said that they are thrilled to join Uber, a platform which could accelerate them on its mission to be there for 'people's life moments'. Drizly plans to expand independently on gaining access to Uber's advanced mobile marketplace technologies.

Drizly is the leading alcohol delivery service in the US and is available in more than 1400 cities. During the lockdown, Drizly's sales boomed up to 300 per cent in 2020.

The acquisition proceedings are expected to end in the first half of this year.