Berlin-based global food (and grocery) delivery giant Delivery Hero is one of the biggest technology companies with local operations all across the Middle East. It earned close to $800 million in revenue from the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey in 2019 after witnessing an increase of 126 percent from the year before. This was almost half of company’s total revenue from its operations across the world.
In 2020, it has brought in $725 million in the first nine months alone in spite of the challenges the company faced due to lockdowns all across the region in the second quarter – which suggests that its Middle Eastern business could very well hit the billion-dollar annual revenue mark for the first time this year.
The company currently has a market cap of close to $25 billion and looking at company’s revenue, its MENA business is responsible for at least one-third of it.
What’s even more important is that the Middle East is the only region where Delivery Hero has been able to have a positive EBITDA for two straight years – in 2017 and 2018 – $24 million and $18 million. The Middle East business would’ve had a positive EBITDA of $70 million in 2019 as well but as the company invested heavily in dark stores and kitchens in the region, it was negative $22 million.
The German company has spent over $1.2 billion in the Middle East – from 2015 to 2020 – which makes it one the biggest acquirer of technology startups in the region. There have been a handful of $100 million exits in the region and Delivery Hero has been directly involved in four of them.
Until August, they had only acquired food delivery companies but with the acquisition of Dubai-based grocery marketplace InstaShop, that changed. Let’s take a look at all the acquisition of Delivery Hero in this piece.
In addition to the companies that have become a part of Delivery Hero as a result of direct acquisitions, many have landed in its kitty indirectly including Talabat and HungerStation.
Some of the other Middle Eastern companies indirectly acquired by Delivery Hero include Otlob (which changed its ownership multiple times before getting sold to Rocket in 2015), 24h.ae, and ifood.jo.
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