Kreos Insights

Interview: 60 Seconds with Niklas Östberg, Founder and CEO of Delivery Hero

By 27/03/2014June 4th, 2021No Comments

Delivery Hero has transformed the way people order food online. The Company’s growth began in  2008 when Niklas Östberg built the leading food delivery site in Sweden and expanded internationally in 2010. The company connects customers on line with peer-reviewed food delivery businesses, providing them with choice, convenience, reliability and quality via access to thousands of online menus.

 

Kreos Capital has provided €13.5 million of growth debt financing to Delivery Hero to support its rapid global expansion.

 

What’s the biggest driver of growth in your business?

It’s a combination of many things but, in short, we have managed to optimise our product and marketing spending to the degree that we have a high return on our advertising spend.

 

What’s the biggest challenge for your business?

To develop a market to the point that it works. Once we get the unit economics to work we are usually quite good at scaling.

 

What have been your key learning experiences so far?

The constant process of building a great team both through the early start-up phase and until we had a more mature company. There are different skills and qualities needed in the different phases.

 

What advice would you offer other growth companies about how they finance their businesses?

Understand your model and how it scales. If you then manage to execute in your business then financing comes naturally. But don’t rush it: raise when you are strong and not when you need capital.

What are the key trends in your industry?

We see how the market is starting to mature and is moving towards a competition between three players. Grubhub leads in the US, Just-Eat is strong in the UK, and Delivery Hero has a strong global position. Each player is currently focused on building and defending their position.

 

How big can Delivery Hero get?

We believe we have the chance to build the clear global leader in the online food ordering space. This is a ‚Ǩ75 billion market. However, our ambition doesn’t stop there!

 

What are your expectations for exit?

We are fully focused on building a great business. We probably will IPO at some point but this is not the focus. Right now we just want to build an awesome food ordering platform for our users.