Food delivery marketplace Foodpanda raises $100 million Series E

by Duncan Riley | May 1, 2015 | Apps, MOBILE, NEWS, Startups | 0 comments

Global food delivery marketplace Foodpanda has raised $100 million Series E in a round led by Goldman Sachs Investment that included previous investor Rocket Internet SE.

Founded in 2012, Foodpanda has a global food delivery presence across 40 countries, from Mexico through to Indonesia, and a pile in between. In most markets it works as a middleman (it is experimenting with its own delivery people in Pakistan,) a one-stop shop if you like for outlets that are able to deliver food in each market it operates in, and it counts McDonalds and Subway among its tens of thousands of food outlets it works with.

“We are very happy about the recent support from Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, with its deep expertise in online marketplaces, and which, together with our renowned group of investors, will allow us to build the leading mobile food delivery marketplace in Emerging Markets targeting over 3 billion consumers” Co-Founder and CEO of the Foodpanda group Ralf Wenzel said in a statement. “The Emerging Markets represent the largest opportunity in online food delivery and we are committed to create the most convenient way for ordering and delivering food.”

Foodpanda offers ordering from its website, as well easy to use iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile apps.

It’s brilliant

Robert Scoble, a self-described “influencer,” recently posted to Facebook his surprise that McDonalds could be delivered in Singapore. That’s fairly standard in South East Asia, and while you can order directly from McDonalds itself, Foodpanda includes it, and often up to hundreds of other places you can order food from depending on the market you are in.

In Chiang Mai, Thailand, for example, the author of this post regularly uses the service, but primarily for food that isn’t walking distance away, such as Subway, or on occasion pizza. Delivery is nearly always prompt, and in Thailand at least it costs 40 Thai Baht ($1.22) for delivery.

There are delivery services in Western countries, but Foodpanda is something extra special again; you’ve got to experience, and use it, to see how wonderfully they bring together a veritable smorgasbord of choice.

Including the new round Foodpanda has raised $310 million to-date. Previous investors who didn’t participate in the new round include Investment AB Kinnevik, Phenomen Ventures, and Falcon Edge Capital.

Foodpanda said it would use the new round to further expand its own delivery activities and improve overall customer experience across its 40 markets.