Delivery Hero joins rival

The Berlin delivery service has acquired just over five percent of its British competitor Deliveroo. As a result, Deliveroo's share price rose by nine percent. The company is also relaunching the Foodpanda brand in Germany, initially only in Berlin.

In 2018, Delivery Hero sold its German business and CEO Niklas Östberg promised to leave the German market alone for two years. As of today, the company is officially active again in Berlin under the Foodpanda brand and has also announced that it has purchased 5.09% of the shares in its competitor Deliveroo, as detailed in a stock exchange release. Both parties remain silent about the amount. Following the announcement, Deliveroo's share price rose by nine percent, its highest value since its IPO in 2020.

Delivery Hero has a tradition of investing in competitors: the Berlin-based company holds a seven percent stake in the Dutch company Just Eat Takeaway (JET), which also owns the well-known Lieferando brand in Germany. Delivery Hero also has stakes in competitors abroad such as Glovo in Spain or Rappi and Zomato in India.

After withdrawing from the German market, Delivery Hero, which was founded in 2011, also relaunched its service in Berlin last Wednesday, delivering not only food from restaurants but also groceries and household goods to its customers' homes. In doing so, it is attacking two markets at once - that of food delivery companies and that of 10-minute grocery delivery services such as Gorillas or Gopuff, which has just expanded into Germany(Startbase reported).

The Foodpanda brand is already active in other markets such as Turkey. In Germany, Foodpanda is currently only active in Berlin, with Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt to follow. The special thing about Foodpanda is the combination of services: "We are the app that offers everything," says Head of Germany Artur Schreiber to Gründerszene.