The online food ordering market has become even more competitive after Berlin startup Delivery Hero announced it has fully acquired UK-based firm Hungryhouse, as well as purchasing smaller UK player EatitNow.co.uk, and putting pressure on its major rival Just Eat in the UK and across the world.
The deal comes after Delivery Hero acquired a ‘controlling interest’ in Germany’s Lieferheld and a ‘pivotal’ stake in Hungryhouse in March 2012, adding its resources to the UK brand and allowing it to triple the size of its business with more than £6 million in sales across 11,000 restaurants every month.
“We believe there is still a lot of growth potential left in this business, and so we re- invested 98% of the purchase price of our shares into Delivery Hero,” says hungryhouse Co- Founder Tony Charles. “We had always planned to make an exit, but the opportunity to continue the Delivery Hero success story was too much fun to turn down!”
Following the merger, Charles will taking a product innovation role, helping the company expand and develop its service well into the future.
Further demonstrating its desire to topple Just-Eat, it’s rival in the UK and across Europe, Delivery Hero acquired its (albeit smaller) rival in the UK, EatitNow.co.uk. On January 24, hungryhouse took over all their orders.
Speaking of Just Eat, the company raised $64 million in funding in April 2012, led by European private equity firm Vitruvian, to help fund its continued expansion into new markets.
The funding was the company’s largest ever round (and third in total) and it also saw Index Ventures, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures participate. It came less than week after Just Eat acquired rival Fillmybelly.com, the UK’s third largest online takeaway site, showing the site’s aggressive plans to expand.
Kickstarted by Team Europe in 2010, the company expects total 2012 revenue to exceed 250 million euros, serving more than 4 million customers. It also says that in two years, it has become “the largest restaurant network for online food ordering in the world.” The counts assists more than 33,000 restaurants, across 12 countries, boost their takeaway orders and “keep up with technological demands.”
Delivery Hero launched its services in South Korea and in China at the end of last year. In total, it is operating in at least 12 markets around the world, including Australia, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Mexico, Sweden, the UK, and several others.
In November 2012, Delivery Hero merged with Foodik, a Russian food delivery startup.
Delivery Hero co-founder and CEO Niklas Östberg said. “Thanks to the passion and enthusiasm of our teams around the world we will continue to build a world class service. We have only seen the start.”
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