Meal delivery company Doordash has its eyes on Europe

American meal delivery company Doordash has European ambitions, which it wants to realise by investing in Berlin-based express grocery delivery service Gorillas.

Money for growth

A few months ago, Bloomberg already reported that Gorillas was looking for fresh capital to open warehouses in new cities: the start-up was aiming for half a billion dollars (430 million euros). Now, America’s largest meal delivery company is prepared to invest heavily in the express courier service, according to Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad: there is talk of hundreds of millions of dollars. Negotiations are still in progress, but it is expected that they could reach a deal before the end of the month.

Doordash went public at the end of last year, earning the company 3.4 billion dollars (just under three billion euros) – meaning there is financial room for takeovers. According to Simon van Veen, fund manager of the Sustainable Dividends Value Fund, there is potential in the combination of the meal delivery company and the express courier: “Meal delivery can be profitable from as little as 10 or 15 euros and, by extension, smaller quantities of groceries can also be delivered. And that within 10 minutes. That makes them faster and cheaper than Albert Heijn“, he warns the Dutch market leader.