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Delivery Hero boss Niklas Östberg
Photo: Delivery Hero / dpa
The Berlin online delivery service Delivery Hero is planning to join its competitor Gorillas.
The manager magazin reports and cites insiders.
Delivery Hero boss Niklas Östberg should therefore initially invest around 200 million euros and later another 200 to 400 million euros.
Existing investors, including the Chinese internet giant Tencent and the US hedge fund Coatue Management, are also expected to participate in the round.
At the request of manager magazin, both companies kept a low profile.
A Delivery Hero spokeswoman said they were not commenting on "market rumors."
A Gorillas spokesman also said that they commented "no speculation about funding rounds."
Gorillas could use capital
Delivery Hero is particularly strong in Asia.
Almost half of the revenues are generated in local markets.
In 2019, the Berlin company had sold its entire German business.
In Europe, Delivery Hero has been on the road with local brands in Northern and Eastern European countries in recent years.
Since May of this year, Östberg has dared to re-enter the highly competitive German market under the Foodpanda brand.
The company offers both restaurant and daily grocery deliveries.
The bottom line was that the German Dax group made a loss of more than 918 million euros in the first six months, as the company announced on Thursday. That was twice as much minus as in the same period last year, when the deficit was 448 million euros. However, the company is growing strongly: Delivery Hero recorded 1.22 billion orders in the first half of the year, more than twice as many as in the same period of the previous year. The group was also able to double sales: to 2.68 billion euros.
The Berlin start-up Gorillas has been luring its customers since last year with the promise of delivering groceries at supermarket prices in around ten minutes.
Competitors like Flink or Grovy offer something similar.
For Gorillas boss Kağan Sümer, an injection of capital would be extremely important in order to be able to continue to finance the high rate of growth.
hej / dpa
