Deliveroo’s sales have more than doubled to £277m, but losses at the takeaway delivery service also increased to nearly £185m.
The privately owned company said losses went up by 43% after it invested £106m more last year than in 2016 in projects including a new head office in Cannon Street, central London, and opening Editions pop-up kitchens.
Sales in Europe doubled, while other markets increased sales by 207% year on year.
Deliveroo raised $500m (£382m) in extra funding in 2017, valuing the business at more than $2bn and making it one of a handful of UK-domiciled “unicorns”– as companies with a valuation of more than $1bn are known.
The company’s growth has attracted the interest of Uber, which is reportedly considering a bid in an attempt to build scale in the takeaway delivery market, to help its Uber Eats service.
London-based Deliveroo works with 50,000 restaurants and 50,000 delivery riders around the world, all of whom it says are independent contractors not entitled to sick pay or holiday pay. The company will move into Taiwan, its 13th market, this year, and expects to expand into other countries in coming months.
Will Shu, the co-founder and chief executive of Deliveroo, said: “Our growth is matched only by our ambition. We want to become the world’s definitive food company and we have invested heavily in innovation, technology, people and restaurants. We are changing the way people eat and helping restaurants to expand to new areas and in new ways.”
The expansion has included the opening of pop-up kitchens in France, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, Dubai and Hong Kong this year. The company said it will have 250 kitchens worldwide by the end of 2018, against a target of 200-plus kitchens it had hoped to have open by this summer.
After pressure from workers’ rights groups, Deliveroo has invested £10m in offering all riders free accident and injury and third-party liability insurance.
It is also directly challenging the takeaway app Just Eat with a plan to sign up 5,000 UK eateries that use their own delivery fleets.
Until this summer, only restaurants that agreed to use Deliveroo’s network of couriers could be listed on the app.
