Niklas Östberg was the face of Delivery Hero for 15 years. Now the founder has announced his retirement.
The founder is leaving: Delivery Hero boss Niklas Östberg announces his retirement. The 46-year-old wants to quit as CEO of the Berlin delivery service by the end of March 2027 at the latest. This means that one of the best-known German tech companies is losing its influential founder. “Delivery Hero has been my life’s work – and today the next chapter of this story begins,” writes Östberg in his Linkedin post.
The announcement is surprising and is unlikely to be voluntary. The background is apparently the increasing pressure from major shareholder Aspex. The Hong Kong investor recently increased his stake to almost 15 percent and repeatedly criticized the weak profitability and Östberg’s strategy.
Worn into the DAX
Östberg co-founded Delivery Hero in Berlin in 2011 and built the company into a global delivery group. In the meantime, Delivery Hero even made it into the Dax. Today the group is active in around 65 countries and is worth almost 7.4 billion euros on the stock exchange.
Recently, however, things have been bumpy for Delivery Hero: business in Asia was considered difficult, the German comeback attempt with Foodpanda failed and several subsidiaries are under pressure from the authorities because of their treatment of drivers.
Before his departure, Östberg should now work out a strategy update and examine “strategic options”. The supervisory board wants to find a successor by the end of 2026.