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There was a time, not so long ago, when Delivery Hero looked like the most ambitious empire in food delivery.
Founded in Berlin in 2011, the group spent the next decade absorbing one regional champion after another, Foodpanda across Asia in 2016, HungerStation in Saudi Arabia, Yemeksepeti in Turkey, Carriage in Kuwait, InstaShop across the Gulf, Glovo across southern Europe and Latin America, more than fifty deals in total.
Talabat had arrived in the portfolio in 2015 via Rocket Internet, which paid $170 million for the Kuwaiti pioneer before folding it into Delivery Hero in exchange for a controlling stake in the German parent.
By the time Talabat listed on the Dubai Financial Market in December 2024, raising $2 billion at a $10.16 billion valuation in MENA's largest ever tech IPO, the empire had reached its high water mark.
Niklas Östberg, the co-founder who had run the business for fifteen years, called the listing the culmination of everything Delivery Hero had been building toward, a company present in more than seventy countries on four continents with a Gulf operation that was now arguably the most valuable food delivery franchise in the world.
Eighteen months later, the empire is in retreat.
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Hong Kong activist Aspex Management, under the combative Hermes Li, has built a roughly 14.6% stake and demanded wholesale management changes, regional divestments and a competitive sales process.
The European Commission has ordered Prosus, Delivery Hero's largest shareholder, to reduce its holding below 10% by the end of the summer, an instruction Prosus has once again been taking very public umbrage with as acquisition talks drive the Berlin company's share price higher and higher.
Foodpanda Taiwan was sold to Grab in March for $600 million, framed by Östberg as "a key first step" but dismissed by Aspex as evidence of "significantly eroded" value. Östberg himself has agreed to step down by March 2027.
Into this vacuum, over the past four weeks, have walked the two American giants who smell blood.
Uber tabled a formal approach last week, having spent recent weeks quietly building a near-25% combined position in Delivery Hero. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi flew himself to Oslo to put the offer to Delivery Hero's supervisory board chair Kristin Skogen Lund at €33 a share, valuing the company at roughly €10 billion. Unsurprisingly, it was summarily rebuffed.
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Tony Xu, DoorDash's chief executive, also made contact with Skogen Lund, although DoorDash was primarily interested in the MENA arm rather than the whole carcass. When DoorDash approached shareholders about that arm, it was told that Delivery Hero's 80% stake in Talabat alone was worth up to €9 billion.
Several Delivery Hero shareholders have meanwhile told the FT they'll be holding out for a price above €40 a share before there's any chance of a green light.
It's arguably the first time these two American companies have properly competed for the same prize, DoorDash having had the domestic US market nigh-on sewn up so we're discounting that one.
So, as the wider world slowly grapples with the end of 'Pax Americana' and the beginnings of a 'post-American' era, food delivery looks set to be the conspicuous exception.
Which leaves some fairly obvious questions hanging in the air.
For paying subscribers: Who Dara Khosrowshahi and Tony Xu actually are as operators, why one is reaching for the whole company while the other is reaching only for its MENA arm, why Talabat and HungerStation might matter for reasons that have more to do with advertising and membership than restaurant commissions, why Uber, despite DoorDash having more to lose, ultimately looks the more likely acquirer, and the small matter of a conflict of interest called Careem.
Inside the operating model
For Dara Khosrowshahi at Uber, the bid would be the largest acquisition in the company's history by a wide margin, and a sharp departure from the doctrine of focus, focus, focus that defined the earlier years of his tenure and saw the company's India operations handed to Zomato, its Didi stake wound down, and, most pointedly given what is now on the table, Uber Eats closed across Saudi and Egypt in May 2020 and its UAE operation folded into Careem.
For Tony Xu at DoorDash, the bid is quite the opposite…
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