Dive Brief:

• Deliverect, a tech company that connects delivery companies directly to restaurants' point-of-sale systems, has secured more than $150 million in Series D funding, the company announced Tuesday. 
• Deliverect plans to use the funding for engineering and technology investments as well as new products. 
• This round brings Deliverect's funding to $240 million since its founding in 2018 and brings the company's valuation to over $1.4 billion, according to the press release. Its last funding round of $65 million came in April, and it raised $18 million in 2020.

Dive Insight:

This latest round of funding shows investor confidence that Deliverect's model is sustainable, as delivery orders remain sticky around the world and tech efficiencies are needed to offset labor shortages. Without a centralized system to integrate delivery orders orders, restaurants must process these orders through disparate tablets —requiring restaurant employees to manually key orders into a POS.  

At the time of its April funding round, Deliverect was averaging more than 1 million orders per week, representing a nearly 750% increase year-over-year. In 2021, Deliverect averaged about 1.5 million orders a week, marking a 300% increase over 2020. According to the press release, Deliverect has received 100 million orders since its launch. 

In a statement, Deliverect Co-Founder and CEO Zhong Xu said streamlined online ordering is needed to meet customer satisfaction as digitization continues. A study from Paytronix found that 42% of U.S. consumers have used a delivery aggregator since 2020, while a recent survey from TD Bank found 71% of restaurant operators rely on delivery for 11% or more of sales.

Tech Crunch reported that Europe is Deliverect's biggest market. In some European regions, like England, 76% of consumers order takeaway at least once a week. Deliverect is used in more than 20,000 locations across 40 markets, including restaurants, convenience stores and grocery stores, but the company wants to provide services to hundreds of thousands of locations.

Deliverect partnered with Grubhub in November to integrate orders on the third-party app directly into restaurants' POS systems. This built on its existing integrations with Uber Eats, Deliveroo and DoorDash and solidifying its ability to cover delivery orders placed through major aggregators. 

Investors may find the company's diversification appealing. Deliverect recently added convenience and grocery stores to its platform in alongside restaurants. The company is also now launching a dedicated app store to more easily integrate its growing roster of partners.

This round of funding will likely facilitate growth, allowing the company to support more digital consumers. But it could also provide Deliverect with an attractive valuation if it decides to go public. The acceleration of digitization throughout the pandemic has also bolstered several restaurant tech companies through IPOs, including Toast and Olo. Bloomberg reports that Deliverect may be next to file either this year or in 2023.