DELIVEROO has acquired Edinburgh-based software design and development firm Cultivate and plans to create a tech hub in the Scottish capital, its first outside London, on the back of the deal.
Deliveroo and Cultivate will seek to develop new ways to improve payment processes to riders and restaurants, building on Deliveroo’s “cash out” feature which allows riders to access their earnings immediately, as part of the link-up.
The two firms have worked closely in the run up to the move, with the Scottish tech consultancy helping to build the payments systems which handle the millions of transactions the food delivery giant’s marketplace oversees.
The firms said the acquisition will bring future benefits to riders and restaurants including improving the payments experience for riders and restaurants and giving both parties more information on how they are earning through the platform, so they can better manage their finances.
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Deliveroo and Cultivate said they will also be working to develop new ways to offer financial support, for example to help riders save and help restaurants manage their cash flow.
Deliveroo will initially double headcount in the next 12 months in Edinburgh and is aiming to house 50 highly-skilled tech jobs in the new Scottish office within three years, more than trebling the current workforce.
The new tech hub will be made up of engineers, product managers, user researchers, designers and data scientists and will grow in the years to come. This will help to further develop Edinburgh’s burgeoning tech ecosystem.
The firms will continue to back the community initiatives that Cultivate already supports, including Prewired, which helps young people learn to code, and codebar, who support underrepresented groups develop software engineering skills.
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Andy Robinson, Cultivate’s chief commercial officer, who becomes Deliveroo’s site lead in Edinburgh, declined to say how much the deal is worth but said: “Deliveroo have bought Cultivate entirely and all of our team are joining Deliveroo as employees of Deliveroo.
“A lot of the work that we’ve been doing over the past few years has been with Deliveroo and this gives us an opportunity to scale the team and build a fantastic place to work.
“As a team we viewed this as being the best opportunity for us to continue to do our best work, working on really interesting problems to scale on a platform used by millions of people.”
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He added: “We have a fantastic relationship with Deliveroo, supporting them through an amazing period of growth. We were attracted by the array of interesting problems being tackled by their team, and how they are addressing them using modern and emerging technology.
“We’re proud to have built such a great team here in Edinburgh, and today’s announcement is a testament to their hard work and expertise in building world-class software.
“We are excited to continue this work, create highly skilled jobs, and build a centre of tech excellence here in Edinburgh.”
Dan Winn, Deliveroo VP of Engineering, said: “As a British company, Deliveroo is proud to be investing in Edinburgh and creating more high skilled jobs in the UK.
“Edinburgh is one of the UK’s fastest growing tech hubs, with access to an excellent talent pool of highly skilled people and university graduates.
“Deliveroo is committed to offering riders flexible, well-paid work and helping restaurants to grow their businesses.
“Building on Cultivate’s expertise, we are excited to create new products and services that will help us achieve this.”
Deliveroo has also committed to being a main sponsor at this year’s Turing Fest, Scotland’s largest tech festival, taking place at the EICC in Edinburgh between August 27-29. Deliveroo’s Jonny Brooks-Bartlett will be speaking at the event.
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