European food delivery startup Delivery Hero raises $421M from Naspers
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
Delivery Hero has spent two years reshaping itself for the public markets: a $110M raise at over $3.1B valuation in 2015 framed an IPO push, followed by the acquisition of Foodpanda and the sale of its UK business to Just Eat for $251M plus earn-out. By June 2017 it had formally announced a $500M+ German IPO, disclosing Q1'17 revenue of $136M, up 68% year over year.
This $421M check from Naspers lands weeks before that IPO announcement and converts the South African group from financial backer into a core strategic shareholder — a position it deepened months later when it bought another 13% of Delivery Hero from Rocket Internet for roughly €660M.
First-order effects
- Delivery Hero enters its German IPO window with a fresh $421M war chest from Naspers, strengthening the balance sheet behind its Foodpanda integration and remaining Asian and Middle Eastern operations.
- Rocket Internet's grip on Delivery Hero dilutes: Naspers is now the company's dominant outside backer, shifting boardroom weight toward Cape Town ahead of listing.
Second-order effects
- Just Eat, which paid $251M for Delivery Hero's UK arm, faces a better-capitalized rival concentrating firepower on the geographies Delivery Hero kept — pricing competition in Asian delivery markets tightens.
- Other European delivery players must line up comparable strategic backers or exit, since a Naspers-funded Delivery Hero can outlast venture-funded competitors in subsidy wars.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, European food delivery consolidates around a handful of platforms owned by large internet holding companies rather than VC syndicates — Naspers' escalating stake purchases point exactly that way.
- IPO-bound delivery companies increasingly sell peripheral markets (as Delivery Hero did with its UK business) to fund concentration in fewer, defensible regions, redrawing the industry map around capital depth instead of country count.
The trend: Food delivery is consolidating into a few heavily capitalized platforms backed by strategic internet groups like Naspers, with IPOs used to bankroll geographic concentration rather than broad expansion.