Foodpanda, the global internet food marketplace major owned by incubator Rocket Internet, has entered into what it calls a year of consolidation, aimed at breaking-even in the next three years.
It recently got on board Saurabh Kochchar, who has worked with many Rocket Internet incubated companies, to do the job. Over the last one-and-a-half years, Foodpanda, which is a major competitor to Zomato, has acquired over 30 companies across the world in the food space.
Kochchar, CEO (India) and chief business officer of Foodpanda globally, is at the helm of the integration programme. In India, Foodpanda acquired JustEat and TastyKhana “The integration started one month back, and will take another two months. Globally integrating the 30 odd companies will take about a year,” said Kochchar. The online food delivery platform is present across 39 countries.
He also added that Foodpanda which witnessed its revenue grow more than 20 times in the past two years will have a stable growth. “We won’t grow at that pace. We will stabilise the growth this year. It is a classical post-merger integration process,” he said.
The long term focus is to break-even as soon as possible. Kochchar said Foodpanda will break-even latest by the next five years, but he is
“hopeful” that he can make it happen as early as in the next two to three years, given the growth of online food delivery market.
Home delivery in India alone is a $15 billion market, and globally is $300 billion, and only a fraction of that is online. Rocket Internet has spent more than a billion dollar in acquisitions of food companies alone, which includes getting 40% of Delivery Hero, and getting a majority stake in Foodpanda. Of the $200 million Foodpanda has raised, $110 was put by Rocket Internet. Recently it put in $40 million to buy an additional 15% stake to become a 52% stakeholder.
In February, Rocket Internet created what is called the Global Take Away group, which will be the holding company for all its food related subsidiaries — Foodpanda, for emerging markets; Delivery Hero for developed markets; Laneveraroja in Spain; Pizzabo in Italy; and Yemeksepeti in Turkey.
However, Kochchar said that Rocket Internet will continue to look at more acquisitions. “We are always looking for good companies which might be a good fit,” he said. Once the integration is done, Kochchar said that Foodpanda will again get on to the high growth mode. Last year, it witnessed at its orders grow by 400% to 13 million orders which got $173 million of annualised gross merchandise value.
Oliver Samwer,CEO of Rocket Internet said in March: “Extending our stake in the fast growing Delivery Hero to almost 40% and increasing our direct ownership in the emerging market focused foodpanda are important steps in building the largest and the only truly global online takeaway marketplace in the world.”