London based Just-Eat, an online take-out ordering service, has closed a financing round of $48m co-led by two leading VCs, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures, with existing investor Index Ventures also participating. Although now based out of London it was originally founded in Denmark.
Just-Eat now plans an international roll-out. Right now it’s in ten countries and three continents and working with 15,000 restaurants. The company claims to generate over $500m of revenue for local businesses in 2011 by linking up normal restaurant POS and ordering systems with an aggregator site which takes orders for takeaway food. As Klaus Nyengaard, Just-Eat CEO says: “restaurant partners get to tap-in to the exploding e-commerce market and consumers can conveniently access a wide choice of restaurants both online and via their mobiles.” The company says it has experienced an 80% growth in online orders in the last year and and order volumes have more than doubled.
The funding is not a huge surprise. In the last five years Just-Eat has become on of the UK’s most successful startups, booking over $10m in revenues per year.