It is reported that while China's e-commerce giant Alibaba is hungry, the American take-away industry is also unwilling to be lonely. On Thursday, DoorDash, an American takeaway startup, announced that it had received $535 million in investment, including $1 million led by Softbank Vision Fund. The deal values DoorDash at $1.4 billion and will create another rival for Uber's takeaway business.
DoorDash takeaway brother
In recent years, Softbank has been throwing money at taxi companies around the world, and recently acquired about 15% of Uber's shares and became its largest shareholder. The Japanese conglomerate also owns shares in companies such as Grab in Singapore, Ola in India, Company 99 in Brazil and Didi in China. Today, Softbank is eyeing the take-away field.
DoorDash and Uber's sideline business-take-away business compete with each other, but Uber is obviously eyeing this market.
in January this year, Uber acquired the take-away restaurant Ando, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said at an event in Munich, Germany that Uber will become the world's largest take-away company this year.
Takeaway is a fragmented market, but investors' confidence in this market has recovered after the successful listing of Blue Apron, a food take-away company, last June. Although Blue Apron's share price fell by more than 7% after listing, GrubHub's share price (also a more direct competitor of DoorDash) rose by nearly 2% in the last year, with a market value of more than 8.5 billion US dollars. Last year, GrubHub bought Eat24, a takeaway company, from Yelp for $288 million.
DoorDash's last financing was in 216, with a financing amount of $127 million. According to the report, DoorDash was valued at $7 million at that time, which failed to reach the company's target valuation of $1 billion.
Tony Xu, CEO of p>DoorDash, told the media that the latest financing will allow the company to cooperate with more restaurants, invest in related technologies, and expand the number of supported cities in the United States and Canada from 6 to 1,6 this year.
Tony Xu said that the goal is to make DoorDash the last mile logistics platform of every city.
like Uber, DoorDash has its own development and operation staff and employs contract workers to deliver meals. Tony Xu said that the company's platform currently has more than 25, food delivery staff. This year, DoorDash plans to increase the number of employees from 55 to 8.
after a new round of investment, Jeff Housenbold, an executive of Softbank Vision Fund, will join the board of directors of DoorDash. DoorDash's existing investors Sequoia Capital and Singapore Government Investment Corporation (GIC) also participated in the new round of financing.
Tony Xu is optimistic that Softbank will invest in Uber and DoorDash at the same time.
"The best investors always win in one field," he said.