The story
Delivery Hero Holding was founded in Berlin by Niklas Östberg, Kolja Hebenstreit, Markus Fuhrmann and Lukasz Gadowski in May 2011, with the goal of turning Delivery Hero into a global online food ordering platform. Under the leadership of Niklas Östberg and Fabian Siegel, Delivery Hero first expanded to Australia and the United Kingdom in 2011. In early 2012 the enterprise acquired Lieferheld in Germany and acquired a stake in Foodarena, Switzerland.
Delivery Hero then raised €25 million in new funding to finance acquisitions in four European countries: Sweden, Finland, Austria and Poland. In August 2012 Delivery Hero started expanding in both South Korea and China through YoGiYo and Aimifan and the Asian expansion continued in 2013 when Delivery Hero increased investment in TastyKhana following a successful cooperation period.
In 2012 and 2013, the harsh competition between the various delivery service online portals led the German press to dub the events as cyberwar between the big web-portals. There were reports of frequent Denial-of-service attacks against each portal, accusations of data stealing as well as numerous lawsuits of the portals against each other. Delivery Hero was one of the more aggressive actors, and in 2012, the Delivery Hero office in Berlin was raided by police and the prosecution pressed charges against the Delivery Hero management. Delivery Hero was prosecuted for perpetrating DoS attacks against its competitors and stealing data from the other web services.
In 2014, Delivery Hero acquired a controlling stake in Latin American market leader PedidosYa and in August 2014 the group acquired German market leader and rival, pizza.de.
According to TNW Tech5 2014, Delivery Hero was one of Germany's top three fastest growing startups at that time.
In April 2015, Delivery Hero acquired South Korean delivery service Baedaltong, one of the chief competitors of its own YoGiYo service. One month later Delivery Hero bought the Turkish competitor Yemeksepeti for 530 million Euro, which was the largest acquisition in this business sector to date. In October 2015 Delivery Hero also acquired Munich-based food delivery service Foodora from Rocket Internet.
In May 2015, the company acquired e-food.gr, one of the largest food delivery players in Greece.
On 10 December 2016, Delivery Hero acquired Singapore-based Foodpanda, a company valued at an estimated $3 billion at that time.
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In December 2016, the company announced the sale of its UK business Hungryhouse to Just Eat for at least £200m. However, the deal needed to be cleared by the Competition and Markets Authority of the UK before completion. On 12 October 2017, the CMA gave preliminary approval for Just Eat to acquire its smaller rival.
In 2016, the company was valued at 2 billion euros. Delivery Hero went public in a listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on 30 June 2017. The market valued it at 4 billion euros (twice as much as its original value). The listing was the largest by a European technology business in almost two years. Delivery Hero raised almost €1bn from the offering.
In February 2018, Delivery Hero acquired deliveras.gr, a food delivery service in Greece.
In December 2018, Delivery Hero announced the sale of its German operations to its Dutch competitor Takeaway.com (now Just Eat Takeaway) for approximately €930 million. The transaction, completed in April 2019, included the Lieferheld and Pizza.de platforms, alongside the German business of foodora. Following the acquisition, Takeaway.com migrated all restaurants and customer bases to its German platform, Lieferando.
The German stock exchange Deutsche Börse announced on 19 August 2020 that Delivery Hero will replace Wirecard in Germany's leading index DAX.
In August 2020, Delivery Hero acquired Instashop for 360 million dollars, the largest price ever commanded by a Greek startup. The deal has also resulted in a big win for founders and investors, Jabbar Group and Venture Friends the two Venture Capital firms who invested early on in Instashop.
In December 2020, Delivery Hero announced that it would take control of South Korea's biggest food delivery app, Woowa Brothers Corp., at a $4 billion valuation. As part of the transaction, Delivery Hero and the management of Woowa have entered into a strategic partnership regarding the operations of Delivery Hero and Woowa in the Asia Pacific region, and will be able to mutually leverage market insights, technology, and operational best practices.
In May 2021, Delivery Hero restarted its German operations following the entry of competitors Uber Eats and Wolt. However, it once again exited the German market in December, citing high costs.
In May 2024, Uber announced its intention to acquire the foodpanda business in Taiwan for approximately $950 million in cash; however, Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission blocked the deal in December 2024 and Uber ultimately terminated the agreement in March 2025 without appealing, paying a termination fee of about $250 million.
Delivery Hero officially ceased Foodpanda operations in Thailand on May 23, 2025. Prior to the shutdown, Foodpanda entered into an agreement with local delivery platform Robinhood (operated by the Yip In Tsoi Group), transitioning its delivery riders, restaurant partners, and users to the Thai service. The shutdown ended foodpanda's 13-year presence in the country.
In March 2026, the company reached an alternative agreement to sell its foodpanda operations in Taiwan to regional competitor Grab for $600 million in cash. Concurrently, under pressure from activist shareholders to rapidly divest non-core operations, JPMorgan Chase was appointed to explore a potential ₩8 trillion ($5.37 billion) sale of Woowa Brothers, the operator of South Korea's dominant delivery platform, Baedal Minjok (Baemin). Amidst these major structural updates, long-time co-founder and CEO Niklas Östberg announced his decision to step down from his position by March 31, 2027, prompting the Supervisory Board to launch a global search for his successor.
In July 2026, Delivery Hero reached an agreement with Uber to be acquired for $14.8 billion.
From Wikipedia’s article on Delivery Hero, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5