Foodpanda confirms it is removing restaurants in ‘clean-up,’ no plans to sell India stake

Food delivery service Foodpanda confirmed on Wednesday it is removing restaurants from its listings as part of a “thorough clean-up” following the acquisition of India-based competitors After TastyKhana and Just Eat over the past year. It also comes just months after Foodpanda raised $210 million in funding between March and May to help it push deeper into markets like India, Mexico, Russia, Brazil, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.

In a statement sent to VentureBeat, Foodpanda spokesperson Tim Schefenacker said:

As a managed marketplace, foodpanda is determined to solve and improve the connection between users and restaurants. It’s part of our core activities to constantly monitor, review and control every restaurant and any usage behavior on our platform, and we take immediate actions if needed. Especially following the acquisitions of two big competitors in India we have carried out a thorough clean-up of our restaurant base. Foodpanda India has an excellent new management team and we will keep on investing. Neither foodpanda nor Rocket Internet are looking to divest their stake in foodpanda India.

However, a report out today by the Economic Times in India suggested that the removal of “more than 500” restaurants was part of a broader attempt to “stabilise operations hit by frenetic growth and upheaval in top management. … The company has been under fire for alleged booking of fake orders by restaurants on its network, even as its Berlin-based parent is actively looking to divest its stake.” The comments from Schefenacker, though, plainly deny any such divestment claims.

Foodpanda declined to comment on exactly how many restaurants it has removed as part of the clean-up, but said it was ongoing and a standard procedure. Read into that as you will. On a side note, Rocket Internet today reported explosive revenue growth for Foodpanda in the first six months of this year, up more than 1,000 percent from the same period a year ago.