Online Takeaway Site Just Eat Raises $48M

UK based online food ordering site Just-Eat has raised $48 million in its second round of funding from Greylock Partners, Redpoint Ventures and existing investor Index Ventures, according to TechCrunch.

With this funding, the Just-Eat brand will be able to carry out its plans to launch in four more countries this year including one in Latin America as well as expand to more cities in India, which it believes will be a lucrative market. The website currently caters to 10 countries and three continents.

Just-Eat raised £10.5 million in January 2010 in Series A funding from Index Ventures, which contributed approximately £7 million while London based private investment firm Venrex and individuals including Carsten Mikkelsen, who was the original angel investor also infused the rest.

It was founded in 2001 by Christian Frismodt and Jesper Buch. In 2005, the SM Trust, which has investments in web hosting firm UK2Group.com and poker site PKR.com, bought a majority share in Just-Eat. It now claims an annual run rate of £250 million worth of sales for restaurants listed on its directory.

In the global online food ordering space, Just Eat competes with Takeaway.com (UK) and Seamlessweb.com (US).

India Investment

"The funds received is not related to India investment and will be used to fuel their international expansion. The group already has a pool of money which will be used to support the growth of Indian operations," said Ritesh Dwivedy, CEO, JustEat.in, speaking to Techcircle.in.

In India, the group had announced it will invest a total of $5-10 million over the next 3 years. Just-Eat is present in India through its acquisition of controlling interest in Hungryzone, a Bangalore-based startup. Hungryzone was rebranded into Just Eat India recently, and extended its services for online ordering and table booking to Mumbai. It plans to reach Delhi and 3 more cities next.

The first tranche of investments has been completed and Just-Eat will gradually increase investment in India over the next three years.

Just Eat India claims a registered customer base of 100,000 users and offers restaurant listings, reviews as well as online ordering. It has listings for over 10,000 restaurants in Bangalore, Bhopal, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Goa, Mumbai, Indore, Hyderabad and Jaipur. It processes an average of 10,000 orders per month, a majority of which are home delivery orders and 20% are online orders.