Jitse Groen’s Start-Up Has Pioneered Britain’s Online Food Delivery Market
It is just a myth that people have good food only on weekends. Though one doesn’t get the time to visit a posh restaurant every day, the craving for good food is a real struggle. Moreover, our everyday busy schedule doesn’t allow anyone of us to prepare good food and cherish a meal. But, that doesn’t mean we are going to be deprived of those robust mouth-watering meals from our favorite restaurants.
You already know the hack, don’t you? Indian population has already become a huge fan of online food delivery services like Zomato, Uber Eats, Swiggy, etc. Similarly, the English people have Takeaway.com to their rescue. Jitse Groen, a Dutch student, founded his online food delivery start-up in 2001 which has now become a billion-dollar business.
Education and Early Career of Jitse Groen
Jitse Groen went to the University of Twente for acquiring his bachelor’s degree in Business Information Technology. He founded Takeaway.com while he was a college student. Apart from founding his business, he served his role as the CEO of GRIB BV from 1998 to 2006. He also worked at HotelSpecial as an Advisory Board Member, worked at Funda as a Board Member, as the CEO of Thuisbezorgd.NL BV (which later became Takeaway.com), etc.
How Jitse founded Takeaway.com
Back in 1999 when Jitse was a college student, the idea of making a website came into his mind. He was attending a party at Noord-Holland and wanted to order a pizza. But, unfortunately, the online service showed that it won’t be able to deliver his choice of food at the given address. And, that’s how this tech guy came up with the idea of founding his online company to serve his nation.
Most of the successful start-ups come from just an idea. Well, it is true that to make a business establish successfully one needs to have patience and proper planning. But, only a few have the guts to take a risk and step out of the boundaries. Jitse decided to create a website that will connect as many restaurants as possible to the people, and he did it.
He registered with the domain name Thuisbezorgd and embarked as a young entrepreneur in 2000.
Jitse’s opinions on online food service
Though the idea of founding a business came within twenty seconds, Jitse did a lot of market research before going international. Moreover, he worked for another nineteen years in different companies. And, after that Takeaway.com finally emerged as the top online food delivery company in Belgium. Jitse knew he needs proper funding and planning before he can place Takeaway on the firm ground.
But, once he established the business he succeeded rapidly. In 2003, he changed the domain name to Takeaway.com because he wanted to go international. He knew it would be tough for him to compete with the other billionaire companies. But, his strategies played the ace for him.
Jitse, in an interview, said that maximum customers look for restaurants that don’t take delivery charges. So, even if they find one out of three hotels charging zero delivery charge they will go for it. And, it happens even if the food is a bit expensive. So, a food outlet selling through the website of Takeaway.com made more profit as compared to any other websites.
Takeaway.com
When Jitse founded the company in 2000, he mainly opened it for delivering kebabs and pizza. Bit, eventually his business expanded and emerged as one of the top online food delivery companies in the Netherlands. Jitse continued working for other companies and didn’t devote all his time to Takeaway.com at the beginning. So, his first big fundraising happened in 2012.
In 2012, Jitse received funding of €13 million from Prime Ventures and started accepting bitcoins from next year. The company raised another round of €74 million in Series B funding from Macquarie Capital and Prime Ventures. By the end of 2016, the valuation of the company almost reached a billion. This year, the company stooped its business in the UK.
The acquisitions of Taleaway.com escalated from 2018. It acquired 10bis, an Israeli company for €135 million and also a Belgium company called BGmenu.com. The company made a major acquisition in July 2019 which is Just Eat. While doing business in the UK, it was one of its biggest competitors. To date, the company successfully delivers around 800,000 orders per month from 10,000 different restaurants.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more