Huge news coming out of the Rocket Internet camp today: the recently-gone-public company incubator and investment firm is betting big on food and grocery delivery as the "next frontier of e-commerce" and is creating what it calls a 'Global Online Takeaway Group' to capitalise on it.
To do this, Rocket Internet has acquired a 30% stake in Delivery Hero for just south of 500 million euros, valuing the Berlin-based takeaway ordering venture at more than €1.65 billion, and will combine it with its rival service provider foodpanda. (also see the 20 biggest EU tech funding rounds of 2014).
On top of that, Rocket Internet is also acquiring 100% of Southern European online food takeaway companies La Nevera Roja in Spain and Pizzabo in Italy for an undisclosed sum.
The news about the deal for La Nevera Roja came out earlier this week, and reports said the consideration for the Spanish company was €80 million.
On a combined basis, Rocket Internet says its group of food-related ventures is currently present in 64 countries, works with 140,000 restaurants and, based on annualised December 2014 numbers, processes 78 million orders.
Rocket Internet made a similar move recently by combining its fashion e-commerce businesses in emerging markets into a single group.
Rocket Internet has also made its single largest investment to date, pumping a whopping €130 million into HelloFresh, the subscription-based grocery e-commerce venture, giving Rocket a majority stake of 52% in the company. Prior backer Insight Venture Partners also invested €10 million.
**Also read:**
Doing it the Rocket Internet way: an inside look at what it’s like to build companies at lightning speed
We are extremely excited about the opportunity in the global food and groceries sector with its tremendous market potential and the prospects of our two market leaders HelloFresh and our newly created Global Online Takeaway Group which combines unique companies to the leading global group in the online food takeaway sector. > > > Our investments in the past months and the performance of our Proven Winners clearly demonstrate and further strengthen our deep confidence in the long\-term success of the business models we launch and operate.
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