British technology company Deliveroo today announced that it has raised a further $98m to close its Series F funding round, bringing the total raised to $482m.
This comes as Deliveroo announces that as of 21st November it will be operating in 200 cities worldwide. Deliveroo’s 200th city will be Cannes in France, where Deliveroo will begin serving customers on Tuesday.
The Series F funding round has been led by T. Rowe Price Associates and Fidelity Management & Research Company, investment managers who have previously backed global technology companies including Facebook, AirBnB and Tesla. Existing investors DST Global, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, and Accel Partners also made follow-on investments, increasing their positions in the company. Additional funding was completed by private investors.
This is one of the largest ever investments into a tech company in the UK or Europe. Deliveroo is now valued at over $2 billion dollars. The company is one of the UK’s biggest tech success stories and plans to invest substantially in innovations in the UK restaurant sector next year.
This additional funding adds to that announced in September and will allow Deliveroo to invest in enabling more people to order great local restaurant food to their front door, more quickly and with more choice. The company has three priority growth areas in which it will focus investment:
First, rapid growth in Deliveroo’s Editions programme of delivery-only kitchens which allows partner restaurants to expand without any of the traditional upfront costs, whilst increasing food selection for customers and optimising delivery times.
Second, growth of its technology team, who will focus on continuing to make improvements to Deliveroo’s world-leading real-time logistics algorithm and artificial intelligence systems while improving riders’ working experience and continuing to develop Deliveroo’s products for restaurants and consumers.
Third, rapid expansion into new towns, cities and countries. This will allow more people to order great food quickly to their door from their favourite local restaurants.
The investment will enable Deliveroo to expand further, which will benefit the wider UK economy. Deliveroo will provide more well-paid and flexible work for riders and will help to generate substantial extra revenues for its restaurant partners. Through its expansion Deliveroo is helping to keep great local restaurants in business in high streets across the UK.
Will Shu, founder and CEO of Deliveroo, said: “This new investment will help Deliveroo to expand in the UK and around the world, bringing ever more great food directly to people’s doors. This is all thanks to the hard work of our riders, the great restaurants that we work with and our brilliant customers. The next exciting phase of the UK restaurant industry will see more power being handed to the consumer, with restaurants better able to cater for consumers’ needs because they have richer data to work with. This investment will help to accelerate this process, bringing more people more choice, healthier options and new food. As our technology improves deliveries will become faster and our selection on offer will become more varied. This is great news for the UK economy as it will help to create work in restaurants as well as well-paid, flexible work for our riders”.
