Food delivery upstart Deliveroo adds another $98M to its latest round, now at $480M

The food-delivery on demand space continues to heat up in Europe. Today, Deliveroo, the London-based startup that just weeks ago announced a Series F of $385 million at a valuation of over $2 billion, today announced another $98 million into the round, led by T. Rowe Price Associates and Fidelity Management & Research Company.

The news underscores how the food delivery business continues to be one of economies of scale: Deliveroo’s extra funding boost comes just a day after Hungryhouse and JustEat announced that regulators have approved their merger, announced almost a year ago. Yesterday, Postmates, one of the delivery hopefuls in the U.S., made its first move outside of the country, to Mexico City, after two years ago saying that it was planning to come to London. Others competing in the same area include Uber’s Uber Eats and Amazon’s Restaurants service.

Global growth, and subsequent economies of scale, are at the heart of this funding and the strategies of these companies.

“This new investment will help Deliveroo to expand in the UK and around the world, bringing ever more great food directly to people’s doors. This is all thanks to the hard work of our riders, the great restaurants that we work with and our brilliant customers,” Will Shu, founder and CEO of Deliveroo, said in a statement. “The next exciting phase of the UK restaurant industry will see more power being handed to the consumer, with restaurants better able to cater for consumers’ needs because they have richer data to work with. This investment will help to accelerate this process, bringing more people more choice, healthier options and new food. As our technology improves deliveries will become faster and our selection on offer will become more varied. This is great news for the UK economy as it will help to create work in restaurants as well as well-paid, flexible work for our riders.”

Just as music streaming companies like Spotify are trying to grow beyond their low-margin business of streaming, Deliveroo is trying to add in more services to meet the needs of its restaurant customers in its two-sided marketplace. This has included building kitchens and more.

Deliveroo has 10,000 restaurants in the UK on its books, and 15,000 riders.

More to come.

Published at Fri, 17 Nov 2017 15:43:23 +0000