Eat Oye! The online food delivery and restaurant reservation portal has been acquired by rival Food Panda. A source privy to the deal informed BR Research that the deal was signed on Tuesday, February 3, 2014 under which ownership of the home-grown platform will shift to Food Panda - Hello Food; a company that is owned by German giant, Rocket Internet.
The source did not immediately confirm the amount that the acquisition took place at, stating, "Details that can be made public will be communicated through an official press release to be issued by Food Panda". That announcement is expected before the end of the week.
The newly-acquired firm will provide a sizeable boost to the number of restaurants and other food businesses listed at Food Panda. Currently Food Panda lists close to 750 restaurants while the freshly acquired firm boasts over 1,000 listings. "Even with the overlap, Eat Oye! appears to have a more diverse mix of restaurants that can aid any hyper local plays by the Rocket Internet company", according to PakStarted, which reports on start-ups and other technological news in Pakistan.
Now bought out, the company was initially established as Food Connection Pakistan, by Rai Umair and Nauman Sikandar. The company subsequently attracted funding and holistic business incubation from Arpatech before launching afresh in early 2014. The IT industry muckraker also asserted that Food Panda would likely retain the founding duo and their team. The company source speaking on condition of anonymity also confirmed that both portals would function under unified management.
The online food delivery and restaurant reservation space in Pakistan is one of the most dynamic subsectors of the online retail space with a number of other players such as KhaoPiyo.pk; Urbanite.pk; FoodClub.pk; Mydeliveryclub.com to name a few. Unfortunately, P@SHA maintains no industry aggregates that could provide exact information about market size, shares and growth rate. Still Food Panda will likely solidify its largest market share because of this deal. Other players within this market may now feel pressed to merge or seek sponsors with deep pockets to match the aggressive strategy deployed by Rocket Internet.
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