Ocado

Company: Ocado Group

Brand value: US$3,297 million

Change since 2019: 63%

Headquarter city: Hatfield 

Category: Retail

Year formed: 2000

Ocado is an online supermarket that delivers groceries direct to customers’ homes. It has over one million registered users and offers around 55,000 products. Demand for Ocado’s services soared during the COVID-19 outbreak, to 10 times usual levels, and despite operating its warehouses around the clock, and hiring new staff, it was still unable to meet demand and issued an apology to customers. Long-time customers, those under the strictest lockdown conditions for medical reasons, and its own frontline staff, were given priority delivery slots.

Marks & Spencer’s investment in half of Ocado’s UK retail business is due to start transforming the range available to customers in late 2020, when the Ocado grocery range switches from Waitrose to M&S products. Ocado has said the new range will offer lower prices, better quality and 50 percent more choice. Outside the UK, Ocado Solutions operates as a technology provider to other retailers, and this year launched its first Customer Fulfilment Centre, for Groupe Casino, near Paris.