Delivery Hero flings $50M into the Battle of the Takeout Boxes

Takeout delivery has been around long before the Internet existed. It’s an easy option for a families without the time to prepare a home-cooked meal or college students locked in their room studying. While it was already a service of convenience, European-based company Delivery Hero strives to make ordering food even more convenient.

Delivery Hero has raised $50 million for its site that lets customers order meals online. You may not have realized ordering takeout was inefficient, but Delivery Hero streamlines the process by eliminating the need to sort through dozens of yellowing takeout menus, pick up that primitive piece of equipment the telephone, attempt to communicate the names of exotic-sounding dishes, and scramble up enough cash to pay at the door.

Hungry customers in Germany, the U.K., Australia, Sweden, Finland, Korea, Russia, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Mexico, Spain, Belgium and can peruse menus from local restaurants, place orders, and pay on the site, and then wait for the food to arrive. Over 22,000 restaurants are in the network, and the funding will go toward adding more, as well as delivering in new markets around the world.

Delivery Hero is part of Team Europe, a Berlin-based startup incubator program that has built a portfolio of 10 companies. To date, it has raised over $100 million, including $31 million in April to acquire the delivery service OnlinePizza Norden Group. This fourth round was led by existing investor Kite Ventures, with support from Kreos Capital.

With its primary competitor Just-Eat tucking away $64 million in new funding four months ago, this money will fuel Delivery Hero in the heated race to be the biggest takeaway delivery service in the world. Just -Eat currently operates in France, Denmark, the Netherlands, China, Estonia, Norway, Berlin, Ireland, the U.K., Brazil, India, Canada and Italy.

If this contest heats up anymore, Europe may become a battleground of flying pizzas and Kung Pao Kung Fu.