VC-backed Take Eat Easy placed under receivership

The announcement was made on the startup's website in a post written by co-founder Chloé Roose. 

In the post, the young entrepreneur explains that although the company had exceeded one million deliveries to date, its current balance sheet did not allow it to carry on with its activity. Roose said that revenues could not cover expenses and that Take Eat Easy did not manage to close its third round of funding.

The start-up had previously managed to secure a total of €16m in funding through two rounds. In September 2015, Eight Roads (formerly known as Fidelity Growth Partners) and existing backers invested in a €10m funding round. The new investor was joined by existing backers DN Capital, Piton Capital and Rocket Internet. In April 2015, the three investors had provided the Belgian startup with a €6m series-A round of funding, enabling it to develop its activity in Paris.

However, the startup had many competitors in the sector, such as Allo Resto in France, Deliveroo in the UK, Foodora in Germany and more recently UberEats, developed by US car service startup Uber.

In a complementary post, CEO and co-founder Adrian Roose added that the startup had started working on its series-C round in October 2015, aware that it "had to gear up as one our our own investor acquired and invested aggressively in a direct competitor, now Foodora, and Deliveroo had just raised a massive round of funding."

In March 2016, after having been rejected by 114 VC funds, the team signed a term sheet with a French state-owned logistics group for a €30m investment, according to the CEO. However, after three months of due diligence, the offer was withdrawn. Due to the exclusivity agreement signed with the potential investor, the startup was then left with no "plan B" and only two weeks ahead to find an alternative, according to Roose.

"For the last 8 weeks, we've desperately tried to find solutions to keep the business alive," the CEO explained. "We've worked on both financing and acquisitions deals in parallel, unfortunately none of them materialised. We have now ran out of time to keep operating business as usual, and are filing for judicial restructuring."

The company stated it had registered a 30% monthly growth last year and raised the number of partner restaurants from 450 to 3,200, with the customer base  growing from 30,000 to 350,000. Over the last year, Take East Easy had also increased the size of its team from 10 to 160.

Founded in 2013 and offering a bike-only delivery service, Take Eat Easy developed its offering in 20 European cities, including Paris, Bordeaux, Berlin, Madrid and London. The startup has developed an algorithm allowing customers to keep track of their order on their mobile or computer screen, and to receive it within 20-30 minutes.

Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported that several French and German investors (including GeoPost, La Poste) are already eyeing the group.

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