Recently Japan’s Rakuten announced its acquisition of a mobile ordering and pickup company, Curbside. Curbside is a unique service that helps restaurants and stores offer their customers the facility of ‘order ahead’. The terms of the all-cash deal were not divulged, but Curbside had earlier raised significant funding of $40 million to $50 million from investors like Sutter Hull Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, CVS, Index Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Chicago Ventures, and various others.

Former Apple engineers having experience in location-based technology laid the foundation for Curbside in the year 2013. It was one of the earliest startups to capitalize on the convenience of online order placing with the option of curbside pick up at physical retail stores that speeds up the process.

Initially, the company launched its mobile shopping app with limited partners which included a shopping center in San Jose and a few Target stores in San Francisco Bay area. Seeing the potential, Target launched its drive up curbside pickup this year. Later, Curbside moved to power mobile orders and store pickups for CVS who was a strategic investment partner in 2016.

This acquisition will allow Rakuten to offer new and improved services to mobile commerce members and merchants.