HelloFresh, the Germany-based meal delivery service backed by e-commerce group Rocket Internet, is planning an initial public offering for later this year, Reuters reported yesterday, citing three people familiar with the matter.
The IPO will take place in Germany as early as October and will likely value HelloFresh at more than €1bn ($1.08bn).
Founded in 2011, HelloFresh runs a subscription service whereby users sign up to have boxes of meal ingredients delivered to them weekly, together with instructions about how to use them to create the meal.
The company has accumulated more than 250,000 paying subscribers and delivers more than four million meals each month.
HelloFresh has raised more than $193m in venture funding, and its current investor base includes Rocket Internet, Vorwerk Direct Selling Ventures, which acts as household appliance distributor Vorwerk’s corporate venturing arm, Insight Venture Partners and Phenomen Ventures.
Rocket Internet led the company’s $126m series E round in February this year, investing alongside venture capital firm Insight Venture, and increasing its stake in the company from 37.4% to 51.7%.
The series E funding came a month after reports that Rocket Internet had bought €30m of HelloFresh’s shares.
The absence of past investors such as Holtzbrinck Ventures, the VC firm spun out of publishing firm Georg von Holtzbrinck, and investment firm Kinnevik in the current investor list suggests they may have sold their shares to Rocket in the transaction.
HelloFresh is not the only Rocket-backed company set to go public over the next year, the sources told Reuters. Online food ordering platform Delivery Hero, fashion e-commerce company Global Fashion Group, and online furniture sellers Westwing and Home24 are all considering their own IPOs over the next two quarters.