Takeaway.com has won the ‘Gouden Groeier’ for the second time. The award, an initiative of Erasmus Center for Entrepreneurship and nlgroeit, was presented during the third edition of the business event BusinessBoost Live in Rotterdam Ahoy. Mona Keijzer, State Secretary of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, announced the winner. Takeaway.com created 4,703 new jobs (in FTE) and thus grew the fastest in the period from the end of 2016 to the end of 2019. This puts the online food delivery marketplace at the top of the Top 250 Scale-ups 2020. The Top 250 companies have grown together with more than 30,000 FTEs, of which more than half of the number of jobs can be attributed to the Top 10.
When Jitse Groen started his website Thuisbezorgd.nl twenty years ago, competition came from Amsterdam and Ede in the form of provisional websites that referred customers to a handful of restaurants in the area. Webpages that were developed on attics or in offices, by students or entrepreneurs who - just like Groen - wondered why you couldn't order pizza or Chinese on the internet. A full decade later, the company had already outgrown the Netherlands. The company recently merged with Just Eat, making it one of the largest meal delivery companies in the world. Picnic, last year’s fastest grower, came in second place this year. Red Je Pakketje, which started in 2016, is the youngest company on the list while Lightronics is the oldest (1946). Depth is placed fourth on the list which makes it the highest new entry.
Fast growth
"It's great that Takeaway.com is once again the fastest-growing company in the Netherlands," said founder and CEO Jitse Groen, "we are growing fast, both in The Netherlands and abroad. Our growth creates many jobs, both at our 27 offices in the Netherlands and abroad, but also locally at our 91 hubs, where we not only recruit delivery staff but also the lead staff.”
Growth factors
Erasmus University has the largest academic research group on Entrepreneurship in Europe, through its Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship, together with the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM). Prof. Justin Jansen, Professor of Corporate Entrepreneurship at RSM acknowledges: “This is the first time that we have been able to identify the factors responsible for the rapid growth of these scale-ups because we have been researching and monitoring them for several years now.” Martin Luxemburg, director of Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship: “Factors that we were able to identify at all the companies investigated are: carrying out the organisation's core values in all business activities, knowing your growth formula (and know how to implement it) and involving your employees in your growth plans. The report that can be downloaded from our website, therefore, includes both the full list of 250 scale-ups and more of these types of factors that influence the growth of companies.”
Why is Takeaway.com growing so fast?
“It is not surprising that Takeaway is the winner”, Prof. Dr Justin Jansen notes. “Our research at Takeaway shows that the company realized early on that the market in which it operates is a ‘winner-takes-it-all’ market, meaning in order to survive and guarantee success, it had to become the biggest player in the market. They have built their growth formula around this given. A second factor for their growth is that by changing the organizational structure and redefining the roles within the team, the company continues to develop its capacity for further growth.
Alumni Erasmus University
Another striking fact is that more than 30 companies from the list have at least one founder with a background at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Martin Luxemburg: "As part of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, we are committed to promoting entrepreneurship. It is nice to see that as a university founded by entrepreneurs over 100 years ago, we are still breathing entrepreneurship and training successful entrepreneurs that we now see reappear in the list."
View the full list of Top 250 Scale-ups 2020.
