Rocket Internet-backed online food ordering venture Foodpanda buys Ecuadorian competitor deliYami

Foodpanda.com (also known as Hellofood), a Rocket Internet-backed global, multi-location online food ordering marketplace with operations in 40 countries including India, has acquired Ecuadorian competitor deliYami for an undisclosed sum. This development comes close on the heels of Foodpanda's acquisition of Russian food delivery venture Delivery Club.

With the deliYami acquisition, Foodpanda will launch its service in the Ecuadorian market and will rebrand it as hellofood.com.ec. In Latin America, Foodpanda is already active in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

Started in 2012, deliYami is currently operational in two cities in Ecuador, including Quito and Guayaquil. "We have worked very hard during the last two years, developing strategic alliances with the main players in the local food industry and building trust among our customers. With the experience, resources and technology of Hellofood, we are ready to take the next big step in order to provide a good service to Ecuadorian consumers," said Luis Villarroel, founder and CEO of deliYami.

"With this acquisition, we will become the market leading food delivery marketplace in Ecuador, strengthening our leading presence in Latin America and adding a new geography to our global footprint," said Alejandro Ponce, co-founder and managing director of Hellofood (Latin America).

Founded in April 2012, Foodpanda features location-specific listing of restaurants on its site. Users can check out menus, along with special offers, post that they can order and get food delivered to their homes. One can also search for restaurants according to cuisine, and/or by other parameters such as vegetarian/non-veg, healthy food, etc. The company helps restaurants increase sales through online and mobile platforms and also provides them with technology and analytics.

Early this year, the firm raised $20 million in funding from Phenomen Ventures, a Russia-based venture capital firm and a group of unnamed investors.

Foodpanda has a significant present in India market, too. In an interview with Techcircle recently, Foodpanda India's managing director Rohit Chadda said that the company has partnerships with 3,500 restaurants in 33 cities across India, and has daily page traffic of 60,000. In the country, it mainly competes with JustEat.in, which has 2,500 partner restaurants across 10 cities at present.