Bangalore : Hungry Zone, India’s leading online food ordering and restaurant table reservation platform, today announced that, Just-Eat, UK’s largest online takeaway ordering service, has acquired a majority shareholding in the company and will invest $ 5-10 million over the next three years into this Joint Venture. Founded in July 2006 and headquartered in Bangalore, India, Hungry Zone enables its customers to place online home delivery orders from over 650 restaurants serving over 40 different cuisines.

This deal is the first major investment of its kind where European e-commerce has invested in India and will provide a strong foundation for the Joint venture to expand into all Indian metropolitan and metropolis cities starting with Mumbai and Delhi shortly.

Commenting on the deal Ritesh Dwivedy, founder and CEO of Hungry Zone, said, “Just-Eat is the leading global player in online food ordering, so the combination of Just-Eat’s best practices, with our strong local knowledge and technical prowess derived from 4yrs of operations in India, will drive growth for many years to come. Our proven business model and 200,000 loyal customers will only grow with our new partners thereby helping us expand our footprint in other major cities.”

Klaus Randel Nyengaard, Group CEO, Just-Eat said, “The acquisition of a controlling interest in Hungry Zone marks the first step of Just-Eat’s expansion into Asia. The synergy between the two companies is compelling and we’re very excited to be working with such a strong local team. India has an exotic and rich culinary heritage; thereby catering to the variant foodies requires an innovative company like Hungry Zone to understand their preferences and I’m very impressed with their results to date.”

The Just-Eat Group operates in the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Canada and India.