Just-Eat acquires 60 p.c in Hungry Zone

BANGALORE, INDIA: Hungry Zone, an online food ordering and restaurant table reservation platform, today announced UK’s online takeaway ordering service Just-Eat has acquired a majority shareholding in the company and will invest $ 5-10 million over the next three years into this joint venture. 

Founded in July 2006 and headquartered in Bangalore, Hungry Zone, funded by venture capital firm Indian Angel Network (IAN), enables its customers to place online home delivery orders from over 650 restaurants serving over 40 different cuisines.

This deal is the first major investment of its kind where European e-commerce has invested in India and will provide a strong foundation for the joint venture to expand into all Indian metropolitan and metropolis cities starting with Mumbai and Delhi shortly.

Ritesh Dwivedy, founder and CEO of Hungry Zone, said, “Just-Eat is the leading global player in online food ordering, so the combination of Just-Eat’s best practices, with our strong local knowledge and technical prowess derived from 4 years of operations in India, will drive growth for many years to come. Our proven business model and 200,000 loyal customers will only grow with our new partners thereby helping us expand our footprint in other major cities.”

Wishing the passionate and committed Hungry Zone team the very best, Joe Fernandes, Indian Angel Network member and Director on Hungry Zone Board, said, “For Indian Angel Network, the investment in Hungry Zone went beyond the financial assistance made in 2008. Crucial inputs on strategy, running and managing the business and evaluating approaches to grow business have made Hungry Zone grow ahead of competitors.

“With its proven business model and relationship with JustEat, leader in online food delivery chain in 8 countries, Hungry Zone will be able to scale its operations with speed and serve a much bigger customer base.”

Sandipan Mitra, sales and marketing director, Hungry zone said, "Restaurants Industry is under developed in India and all set to grow at 20 percent annually. The market is fragmented with just 7.2 percent of restaurants being 'organised' (with accounting standards and regulatory compliances, organised supply chain, and multiple outlet) which makes a role of an aggregator more compelling."

He added, "Looking at the growth level, we would like to increase our head count from 25 to 55 by year end and focus to cover in key metro cities like Mumbai and Delhi.”

Commenting on the role of Indian Angel Network (IAN) for Hungry zone, Joseph Fernandes said, “Members at Indian Angel Network (IAN) are successful entrepreneurs and we help other entrepreneurs who want to be successful. We invest in start-ups and early stage ventures, converting job seekers into job creators and helping them to generate disproportionate wealth. As of now we have invested in 23 different companies who are catering into different verticals.”

He added, "We always look for early stage companies or start-ups and Hungry Zone is one among them. We identify them to partner at the risky stage of the business, which is a high risky job to get the right model. The team at Hungry Zone were struggling for the right path with focus-oriented team. We helped them with our expertize and worked together to achieve the goals.

“Our intention to partner with them was not only to give cash but to make sure they get the right model. Once we have a right model in place, we make exist. So far for the investment we made, six of them was successful and others are all going well," added Joseph.

Recalling the investment of IAN in the year 2006, Ritesh Dwivedy, founder and CEO of Hungry Zone said, “Initially we were looking for mentors who can help us to set our career path in the right direction providing ideas in the field of sales and marketing. While searching for a mentor, I met Joseph, who was my senior in my college and also a member of IAN.”

“Joe helped us to get other key experts namely Pradeep Gupta, Rajan Anandan, Anurag Jain, Murali Sundarlingam and Kimmi from IAN and all of these successful entrepreneurs helped us not just by bringing the money to us but also helped us in understanding how to build a business, how to prove what we are doing and more importantly not just to blow the money away.”

Ritesh said Hungry Zone wouldn't have been here without the support of IAN. “We at HungryZone are thankful to them for the support, the ideas which they shared along with expertise in different areas helped us to prove what we are,” concluded Ritesh.

Klaus Randel Nyengaard, Group CEO, Just-Eat said, “The acquisition of a controlling interest in Hungry Zone marks the first step of Just-Eat’s expansion into Asia. The synergy between the two companies is compelling and we’re very excited to be working with such a strong local team. India has an exotic and rich culinary heritage; thereby catering to the variant foodies requires an innovative company like Hungry Zone to understand their preferences and I’m very impressed with their results to date.”

The Just-Eat Group operates in the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Canada and India.