UK’s Deliveroo makes its UAE debut

Deliveroo’s app now available in Dubai. (Images via
Deliveroo)

The UK-based food delivery site Deliveroo is
launching in the UAE.

With a focus on high-end restaurants that don’t
normally offer delivery services, the company has said it is
launching in five new cities, including Dubai.

At the same time it announced Tuesday that it
has raised a $100 million Series D round, led by the Russian
investment firm DST Global and US-based Greenoaks
Capital with participation from existing investors Accel,
Hummingbird Ventures and Index Ventures.

With online food delivery becoming the go-to
approach for eating for for UAE residents (a recent survey by KPMG
stated that as much as
60 percent of UAE residents order food
delivery at least once a week) it seems the timing is right for
Deliveroo’s expansion into the region.

According to a statement released by Deliveroo,
a restaurant that partners with the delivery site is going to be
able to utilize their excess kitchen capacity and generate an
increase of as much as 30 percent on revenue, without having to use
their own drivers and tech infrastructure.

“While about 50 percent of the restaurants on
our platform do have their own delivery services we control [a food
order] from A to Z,” Anis Harb, general manager for the UAE, told
Wamda.

With an average delivery time of 32 minutes the
platform offers users restaurants that fall within a range of about
3km. Users are also able to track their delivery drive, much like
an Uber taxi. “Keeping it hyper-local keeps the delivery time
down,” said Harb, adding that the driving time for their drivers is
around 10 minutes.

The rise of Deliveroo, a London-based company,
has been exponential. Launched in 2013 their edge was to partner
with restaurants that would not typically offer delivery services.
In July 2015 they announced a
Series C round of $70 million from
Greenoaks Capital and Index Ventures, all the
while growing to cover 50 cities in 12 countries. They currently
have over 5,000 restaurants worldwide on their platform.

Harb
said in a statement that Deliveroo was a service for those seeking
quality and speed. “We’ve seen it in ecommerce with
Amazon, transportation with Uber; now we’re
seeing it in food where customers are being more demanding, both on
the reliability of the service and the selection of restaurants. We
are delighted to bring this concept that has been so popular in
Europe to the GCC market.”

A new age for delivery in the UAE.