Delivery Hero joins rival

The Berlin-based delivery service has acquired just over five per cent of its UK rival Deliveroo. Deliveroo's share price rose by nine percent as a result. The company is also re-launching in Germany with its Foodpanda brand, 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 back in Berlin under the Foodpanda brand and also announced it has bought 5.09 percent of shares from rival Deliveroo, according to a stock exchange release. Both sides are keeping quiet about the amount. Following the announcement, Deliveroo's shares rose nine percent, giving it its highest value since its 2020 IPO.

Delivery Hero has a tradition of taking stakes in competitors: for example, the Berlin-based company holds seven percent of Dutch company Just Eat Takeaway (JET), which also owns Lieferando, a well-known 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 re-launched a service in Berlin last Wednesday, but delivers not only food from restaurants, but also groceries and household goods to its customers' homes. In doing so, it's attacking two markets at once - that of food delivery services and that of 10-minute grocery delivery services like Gorillas or Gopuff, which has just expanded into Germany(Startbase reported).

The Foodpanda brand is already active in other markets like Turkey. In Germany, Foodpanda is only active in Berlin for the time being, Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt are to follow. What makes Foodpanda special is the combination of its offerings: "We are the app that offers everything," Germany CEO Artur Schreiber told Gründerszene.