Monthly Archives: May 2015

Yemeksepeti and Delivery hero

Delivery Hero Acquire Turkey’s Yemeksepeti for a Record $589M

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Recently, the food tech market has become the talk of the town and has gained a huge demand amongst the investor world. If you look at it from a broader angle; the whole hype is mostly because, this part of the industry still remains an untapped market, but with a huge potential!

Anyways, the numbers are speaking for themselves too! The funding for this industry has shot up from just $50 Million in 2008 to a whooping $350 Million in 2013.

To capitalize on that, start-ups like Postmates, Sprig or Chipotle in the U.S. are trying their level best to out beat each other, to carve out a position for themselves in the food delivery business, either by signing up big brands like McDonald’s or by raising funds.

Now while all that is happening, there are also some other start-ups like Seamless and GrubHub, who have merged with each other to kill the competition as well.

But leaving all of them behind, Delivery Hero has recently played some moves, which now makes them the clear winner of this industry.

Wanna know what they are, read on…

Latest News

Well, our Berlin-based Delivery Hero, the billion-dollar takeout food service and the global leader in online and mobile food ordering, has recently officially announced that it has fully acquired the Turkey-based Yemeksepeti for a humongous amount valued at $589 Million.

Statistics say that, this is the largest acquisition ever made in the food tech sector and has not only opened doors for many opportunities for themselves, but also for many others too.

Delivery Hero admits that this deal is their first move into Turkey, and additionally, this acquisition has not only increased its business to 10 Mil orders monthly (which is far more than any other global player), but has also increased & further strengthened their position as a global market leader.

Coincidently, most of Yemeksepeti’s international market clashes with the market where Delivery Hero is also active through its latest acquisition of Talabat.com (in March 2015). And hence, a unification of both these companies is further going to enhance the value of this partnership in these markets as well.

As a part of the deal, Nevzat Aydin – CEO and Co-founder of Yemeksepeti will not only continue to lead the company but will also join Delivery Hero as a senior adviser to widen their business. And other than that, General Atlantic LLC – Yemeksepeti’s investor will also become a shareholder in Delivery Hero.

What adds to the moment is that; out of the $1.3 Billion they have raised so far, $586 Mil of which has been raised in Feb of this year only, from Rocket Internet.

Using that amount, Delivery Hero has gone on a wipe-out spree and has bought all its potential threats, nine smaller food-ordering start-ups (one of which being its rival – Pizza.de) to be precise.

At the same time; Delivery Hero has also acquired the Greek market leader ‘e-Food.gr’, which spreads across more than 40 cities in Greece and gets over 300k orders per month, thus making them the king of the sector in Greece.

Now these things are definitely screaming volumes of activities in the sector.

Let’s give you a brief insight about Delivery Hero & Yemeksepeti!

  • Delivery Hero

delivery hero

As the name itself says it; Delivery Hero is an online food-ordering service with the help of which, one can use the digital medium to order their favourite foods easily and conveniently from home, from work, or on the road.

At present; with a strong team of 1,500 employees, it operates in approximately 34 countries spread across five continents. It has the largest food network in the world with more than 100,000 participating restaurants and over 10 million orders globally each month.

The company was founded by Niklas Östberg in May 2011 and since then have been helping consumers order food online we have been continuously transforming the way people order food online.

Niklas has been into building internet companies for more than a decade now and after jumping from multiple projects, he finally found his true calling at Delivery Hero.

The company is headquartered in the Start-up capital of Europe – Berlin and is presently backed by a strong group of: Team Europe, Tengelmann Ventures, Kite Ventures, ru-Net, Insight Venture Partners, Point Nine Capital, Lead Edge Capital, Target Ventures, and Vostok Nafta.

A lesser known fact remains that; 39% of Delivery Hero is owned by Germany’s Rocket Internet.

  • Yemeksepeti

Yemeksepeti

 

Talking about Yemeksepeti; it is again, an online food ordering service provider but with a small twist to the common notion. Here, they give their users the facility to place an order through them, from their list of restaurants without charging any extra fees.

The company was founded 15 years ago and today has become a highly popular brand in Turkey, which processes over 3 million orders every month, holds accounts of 9,000 member restaurants, and 2.9 million users on its database. It currently operates in 57 cities in Turkey and in Cyprus.

Other than Turkey – their domestic ground, Yemeksepeti is also said to be aggressively active in the Middle East including UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Jordan, where they provide their food ordering services.

Some of the restaurant on its database includes global giants like Subway, Dominos, Nandos, etc along with local restaurants like Arz Lebanon, Just Falafel and Al Farooj Fresh. It also holds its headquarters in Dubai, by the name of Foodonclick.com.

A lesser known fact remains that; Yemeksepeti had also entered the Greece market in 2013 by investing in a local company called ‘Click Delivery’.

dogbuddy dog sitting platforms

myDogBuddy and Bibulu become DogBuddy and Together Raises €1.9 Million

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Not most of us are aware that there are over 75 million pet dogs in just Europe itself. And to add to that; this petting industry supports over 500k jobs.

Looking at these stats, clearly we live in a world where most of us just, simply adore pets. But at the same time, due to the unorganised system of the industry, there still remain quite a few pain points which continue to hamper most of us, one of them being – pet sitting!

But with platforms like myDogBuddy coming up, these problems will soon become a passé!

Short brief about MyDogBuddy!

In the simplest terms, myDogBuddy is a platform that connects the dog owners with the dog sitters!

Just like most businesses are found when few people get together to solve a pain point they continue to face; similarly, myDogBuddy was the prodigy of Enrico and Richard, two passionate dog lovers who faced immense problems when it came to leaving their dogs while travelling or unexpected situations.

myDogBuddy was an idea which initially was found for themselves, which later was transformed into a full-fledge business and extended to other dog owners facing similar issues, to help them find vetted and experienced dog sitters in their local community. It was also an attempt to stop the forced reliability on friends or caged Kennels to look after their dogs.

TRIVIA: – DogBuddy.com was a portal that was purchased at a Godaddy.com Auction back in April 2012 for an insignificant $350.

Today, it has transformed into a typical online marketplace, that works in the most transparent format, to help the dog owners from across the U.K., Spain, Italy, France and Germany to smoothly and effortlessly find pet sitters for their dogs who can take care of them while they are away for weekends, longer holidays, business trips or for that matter while long working hours.

DogBuddy (After Merger) has become one of the leading peer-to-peer dog sitting medium which has more than 100,000 members across 5 countries in Europe and at the same time, has provided hundreds of thousands of dog nights to their members as well.

Some of their services include walking, day sitting and full board. Other than that, one can visit the portal and browse through the vetted sitter profiles, look at images (including of their houses), read other user reviews, book and pay online for the services, etc. To add to that, what is even more beneficial is that, the services you book through the myDogBuddy portal also gets covered by insurance and emergency support.

The portal as of date faces direct competition from a number of similar business models like: Rover & DogVacay in the US and Holidog (more of a classifieds site) and Pawshake in Europe. But because MyDogBuddy now boasts a marketplace of over 10,000 verified sitters/walkers, it proudly out beats all its competitors by a huge number.

So how does it work?

The process of the services is pretty much self explanatory and transparent. All one needs to do is: –

  • Visit their portal i.e. https://uk.dogbuddy.com
  • Find a dog sitter from the list of thousands of trusted & insured dog sitters, available nearest to you.
  • Then Schedule & Book the date/s for the pet sitting
  • Lastly, pay cashless through their online medium. Also, all the bookings through the site are covered by pet insurance and with vets on standby 24/7 for any emergencies.
  • And Done! You can send your pet on the chosen date.

Now while you are away, the pet sitters will also send you pictures and videos of your pet.

You can be rest assured about the sitter because as per the portal, they only accept 10% of dog sitter applications, after thorough background check and 99% of them have a five-star rating.

Latest Updates

The London based DogBuddy which had been off the radar since a while, has hit the news once again with their latest announcement. Recently the founders confirmed that their company has merged with its Spanish rival “Bibulu,” in an attempt to become and sustain its lead in becoming the largest of its kind.

As a part of their merger, Richard Setterwall will remain in London as CEO, whereas Enrico Sargiacomo – the Founder of Bibulu, will become the COO with his base being in Barcelona.

While at it, the merger has also given birth to the rebranding of their combined entity, to a rather simpler name – “DogBuddy.com”.

The idea of merger first rose, when the founder of myDogBuddy experienced an unexpected growth since their launch and to capitalise on the same, he began to look for sustainable strategies and options across Europe. That is when he came across a well-functioning Bibulu, who was preparing to expand to France and Germany.

Hence, without wasting time, founders of both the companies fixed up a meeting on a neutral ground in Paris, to understand each other’s future vision of their respective companies. And to their surprise they realised that, the match seemed to be just, perfect and both were highly like-minded. Hence, rather than killing each other’s business, both decided to join hands and work together.

In addition to that, the company also further raised “€1.9 Million ($2.1 Million)” in March, in funding from several private and institutional investors, which includes BetaAngels, Caixa Capital Risc, Eversmarter WW, and Andrin Bachmann.

This being their first fund raiser, the new found partnership has strong intentions to use the money to further manage & extend their gradual growth in current and new, markets and improve their product offerings as well.