British food delivery firm Deliveroo plans to hire at least 300 software and hardware engineers when it opens its new London office later this year.
"Deliveroo is going from strength to strength and growing every single day. London is where I founded this company and it's from our headquarters here that we export our British-born technology around the world," Will Shu, founder and CEO of Deliveroo, said.
The new recruitment campaign will increase Deliveroo's workforce by a third this year. It will need people in the areas including software engineering, behavioral economics, and algorithm development.
The company experienced a 25 percent month-on-moth growth in orders in 2016, with rates increasing 10 times than that of in 2015, according to the CBR Online. Deliveroo's rates of takeaway orders in 2016 soared to as high as 650 percent, despite facing tough competition with Uber, Amazon, and JustEat.
However, it also reported losses in the previous years because of its drastic international expansion. In 2014, it reported a $1.7 million loss and a staggering $22.2 million in 2015.
The four-year old Deliveroo has over 1,000 full-time employees and teams up with more than 20,000 restaurants in more than 130 cities across the world.
However, as it starts to increase its workforce, the company is facing growing pressure to provide more workers' rights to its freelance delivery riders, the BBC noted. One of the reported demands is to classify them as workers rather than self-employed contractors.
Last summer, it attempted to lower its hourly rate from £7.00 ($8.61) to £3.75 ($4.61) during quieter delivery periods, a move that was greatly opposed by riders. Deliveroo eventually had to cancel the proposal and guaranteed an hourly rate of at least £7.50 ($9.23) and petrol for those who are willing to participate, according to the Tech City News.
Deliveroo was founded in 2013 and has raised around $472 million from UK investors such as Accel Partners, Bridgepoint, and Index Ventures.