Delivery Hero

Berlin-based Delivery Hero offers online food delivery through partnerships with more than 600,000 restaurants. The company has also expanded into quick commerce (Q-commerce) and  delivers flowers, pharmaceuticals, and groceries, using a hybrid business model consisting of merchant partnerships and its own network of dark stores/warehouses. Delivery Hero operates in more than 70 countries (across Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa), under around 13 brands.

Delivery Hero carried out a series of acquisitions and brand launches aligned to its expansion plans in focus markets. 

- In March 2015, the company acquired the Middle Eastern food delivery aggregator Talabat. As of September 2022, Talabat claims to be the region’s largest food delivery and grocery platform, operating in nine different countries including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, Bahrain, and Jordan. 

- The company acquired Danish startup Hungry in October 2021 to strengthen its foothold in the Nordic region. 

- In March 2021, it acquired South Korea’s largest online food delivery platform, Woowa (82% market share; 15.8 million monthly active users as at November 2020). The transaction, which required Delivery Hero to divest its own South Korean food delivery app Yogiyo (ranked second in terms of market share), strengthened the company’s presence in Asia, which it views as a key growth region. 

- In July 2023, Delivery Hero completed the acquisition of HungerStation, a Saudi Arabia-based food delivery aggregator.

- The company acquired a majority stake in Glovo, a Spanish on-demand delivery app, in January 2022, allowing Delivery Hero to integrate with 1) Glovo’s network of quick commerce (q-commerce) operations, involving a mix of merchant partnerships and its own network of 18 dark stores as at January 2021; and 2) Glovo Concepts (launched in July 2021) which offers a portfolio of eight virtual/delivery-only food brands, under which Glovo provides the menu, ingredients, brand name and recipes to restaurants, who operate under the selected brand using their existing facilities and staff. As of September 2021, Glovo operates across 20+ countries, including Portugal, Italy, Poland, Romania and Kenya, servicing 3.8 million active customers via a network of 58,000 couriers, with established ties to 89,000 local shops and restaurants. More recently, in March 2022, Glovo acquired Kitch, a Portugal-based restaurant order management platform, to support the needs of its restaurant partners across Glovo's operations. 

In January 2022, key Delivery Hero brands came under regulatory scrutiny: 1) Foodpanda was investigated by the Competition Commission in Hong Kong for imposing exclusivity restrictions on their partner restaurants and 2) Foodora in Norway had to end its exclusive arrangements with restaurants, as it was considered anti-competitive. In December 2021 the company also scaled down its FoodPanda operations in Germany and sold it in Japan. 

Funding and financials

Delivery Hero generated a revenue of USD 10,737 million and incurred an operating loss of USD 1,789 million during the year ended December 2023. In January 2022, Delivery Hero divested the majority of its total invested capital (~USD 150 million worth stake) in Latin American delivery company Rappi, and it currently only holds a 7.9% stake on a fully diluted basis. In September 2021, the company raised EUR 1.25 billion (~USD 1.5 billion) from a convertible bond sale to institutional investors, via a private placement. It planned to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes and to capitalize on potential new investment opportunities.