Foodpanda, an online food delivery service which is a portfolio company of the Germany-based, Samwer brothers’ ecommerce incubator Rocket Internet, has received a strategic investment of $8m from iMENA Holdings, a MENA-focused, consumer internet holding company and accelerator, in order to support its affiliated brand Hellofood.
The funds will be used to expand Hellofood’s operations in the Middle East, beyond Saudi Arabia.
Hellofood and iMENA Holdings state that: “With the partnership in place, restaurants across the region will have the opportunity to benefit from the growth of the consumer online industry through the global and regional support of two leading investors, developers, and operators of leading online businesses with a wide reach and significant resources to support the growth of their businesses.”
Recently, in May 2013, Foodpanda secured $20m funding from a group of investors, among them Sweden-based investment company Investment AB Kinnevik and Russia-based venture capital firm Phenomen Ventures.
Earlier in 2013, Foodpanda took over a competitor Ételvitel KFT in Hungary; in August 2013, six months after launching in Brazil, Hellofood took over two of its competitors MegaMenu and Jánamesa, a Brazilian operation affiliated to German startup Lieferando; also in August, Foodpanda rolled out its services in the Czech Republic, and in September, Foodpanda launched in Romania.
Competitor take-away delivery services, globally, include Delivery Hero, Just-Eat and GrubHub.