iFood is a Brazilian online food ordering and food delivery platform, currently operating in Brazil and previously in Colombia. The company holds over 80% market share of the food delivery sector in Brazil.[1] It is owned by Dutch-based Prosus (part of Naspers) and its Brazilian investment firm Movile.[2]
It merged its businesses in Argentina and Colombia with rivals PedidosYa in August 2018 and Domicilios.com in March 2021 respectively, brands of Delivery Hero which is also owned by Prosus.[3][4] It operated as SinDelantal in Mexico until December 2020.[5]
Currently, iFood holds 83% of the meal delivery market in Brazil[6][7] and is the subject of proceedings by CADE.[8][9][10] A survey by the Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants (ABRASEL) pointed out that orders made by the platform are on average 17.5% more expensive for the consumer, compared to the same order made directly at the restaurant.[11]
History
iFood was founded in 2011 by Patrick Sigrist, Guilherme Bonifacio, Eduardo Baer and Felipe Fioravante.[12][13]Movile owns iFood as a subsidiary, with Just Eat owning a 33% stake in iFood until 2022.[13]Naspers provided funding when iFood had just started.[13]
It serves customers in Brazil and Mexico.[14][contradictory] It connected 15,000 restaurants to customers who collectively placed four million orders every month in 2018.[14] iFood had £123.8m in sales, making it 16 times larger than the next largest delivery company in the region in 2018.[13] iFood has 80% of the market share in Brazil of food deliveries and according to the book Business Despite Borders, "iFood became a synonym of food delivery in Brazil."[14]
In August 2018, PedidosYa acquired the Argentinian business.[15][16] In March 2021, the merger of the Colombian subsidiary with PedidosYa was approved.[17]
In September, it acquired the São Paulo startup SiteMercado, an e-commerce platform focused on markets and grocery stores which it has partnered with since 2019.[18][19]
On 19 August 2022, Just Eat Takeaway.com sold its 33% stake in iFood to Prosus for €1.8 billion.[20][21] This follows years of talks of Just Eat Takeaway selling their share in the company since 2020.[22]
On 21 November 2022 iFood ended operations in Colombia,[23] the decision was a business strategy due to the moment in the capital market.
iFood broke sales records during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, where more than 8 million orders were placed on the app over the weekend of December 2-4, the best mark in 2022. Thus, the first weekend of December not only had the most orders in 2022, but also surpassed the weekends of 2021.[24]
