Deliveroo, the London's headquartered restaurant food delivery startup, raised $385 million in new funding, giving it an estimate valuation of “over $2 billion,” according to the company.
The Series F round is led by USA. fund managers T. Rowe Price, and Fidelity — who have formerly backed the likes of Facebook, AirBnB and Tesla — with existing investors DST Global, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, and Accel Partners also following on.The Total capital for the European unicorn now sits at $860 million.
The new fund will be used by Deliveroo to invest in three aspects of its business:
The first aspect is expansion of its “Editions” (formerly referred to as RooBox) programme, which sees it open delivery-only kitchens to let partner restaurants to expand without any of the customary upfront costs, whilst increasing food selection for customers and optimizing delivery times.
Second, they plan to continue to grow the size of their technology team who, among-st other things, work on Deliveroo’s “real-time logistics algorithm and artificial intelligence systems” to help in improving the speed and number of deliveries that can be made in order to increase what are otherwise very thin margins for on-demand food delivery. Another aspect to its data science is working out where it should open it next Editions kitchens and what kind of food is in demand locally.
Third, the company says it want to rapidly expand into new towns, cities and countries. “They said it will allow more people to order great food quickly to their doorsteps from their favorite local restaurants,” says the Deliveroo.
Will Shu founder and CEO of Deliveroo, said in a statement:
“I remember how excited I was when carrying out the first delivery. I hoped that people would love being able to order great food from their favorite local restaurants straight to their front door. I am proud that just four years on, millions of people use Deliveroo in over 150 cities around the world. This is all thanks to the hard work of our riders, the great restaurants that we work with and our brilliant customers.Meanwhile, the company’s accounts for the year ending 31st December 2016 were recently filed, and although they are apparently already nine months out of date, make for interesting reading. As Business Insider reports, Deliveroo grew a lot in 2016, with a revenue up to 611% to £129 million. But losses were up too — a 300% increase to £129 million. However, the figure to really watch is the food delivery company’s gross margin percentage, which sat at just 0.7%.
So I am very delighted that our new investors share this vision and have decided to make such a substantial investment in the future.
With this funding we will invest further in our delivery-only kitchens Editions, in developing our technology and in taking Deliveroo to more towns and cities. This investment will take us to the next level and allow our riders to deliver ever more great food directly to people’s doors.”
Source: TechCrunch
