DoorDash, the SoftBank backed U.S. based food delivery upstart, has announced that the platform is going public in an Initial Public Offering(IPO) led by Goldman Sachs. The filing has made been confidentially and the company has not yet revealed how many shares it is planning on selling and what the price per share will be. The timing of this offering is also unknown yet.
The platform was last valued at $13 billion when it raised $700 million in 2019. The company is the leading player in the door to door food delivery market of U.S.(it might easily be called the Zomato of U.S.) but faces tough competition from the likes of Grubhub(32%), Postmates (10% share) and Uber Eats (20%) in the oversaturated market. One of these competitors, Postmates, has also announced its plans to go public and said 12 months ago that it had confidentially filed for a public offering. However, the company, which is worth $2.4 billion, is yet to go public, even an year after the alleged IPO was announced.
Confidential IPOs like these are good for non-profitable companies like DoorDash to go public without the wall street chastising them over their numbers. This can be a lucrative opportunity for ‘in loss’ companies which have struggled with IPOs. Casper Sleep can be a shining example of this, which sold its shares last month at the bottom end of a targeted range that it had already lowered, effectively cutting its valuation by half.
Even WeWork, a company we have reported about on several occasions in the past, was scrutinized by investors over its ballooning losses, eventually leading it to scrap its high profile public market debut.
It’s no surprise that food delivery startups are struggling all over the world. In India, the market that has seen the most investment in this space after the US, Zomato and Swiggy have been facing increasing losses every since their debut. The companies are thus trying to find alternative revenue generators. While Zomato acquired Indian operations of Uber Eats, Swiggy has looked to raise more capital which might go into building Swiggy kitchens and fund its other initiatives like Swiggy Go(the company’s new feature to provide city wide package deliveries in select locations).
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