Deliveroo's revenues are set to hit £130 million in 2016

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Deliveroo CEO William Shu

Deliveroo

Deliveroo cofounder and CEO Will Shu.

Deliveroo, a restaurant food delivery service, is expecting its revenues to hit £130 million this year, according to The Telegraph.

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The figure - an internal projection that has reportedly been shared with investors - represents growth of more than 1,000% in the last year, The Telegraph reports.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in London, Deliveroo has built a platform that allows people to get food from popular restaurants delivered to their home or office by a cyclist or moped driver. For every transaction, the company charges the customer a £2.50 delivery charge and takes a commission fee from the restaurant. Restaurants like PizzaExpress, Dishoom, and Gourmet Burger Kitchen have all signed up to the platform, as has Michelin-starred restaurant Trishna.

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Fueled with $200 million of investment (£139 million), Deliveroo has expanded to 68 cities across Europe, Asia and Australia, with 38 of those in the UK. But the company has not publicly disclosed sales figures.

If true, the £130 million figure would represent monthly sales figures more than 10x those of early last year, when Deliveroo said its annual revenue was approaching eight figures, The Telegraph reports.

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Analysts have warned that many food delivery companies are turning out to be "donkeys," not "unicorns," which is the term given to a tech company when it reaches a $1 billion (£690 million) valuation. "It is the startups that involve pick-ups or drop-offs of an asset that have got into trouble as the unicorn disguises are already slipping, revealing the true colours of the donkeys underneath," wrote Edison Investment Research.

Dan Warne, managing director for UK & Ireland at Deliveroo, told Business Insider last month: "We've been in that hyper, hyper growth phase. We still very much are in that stage but equally we're focused on optimising the business now too, making sure that we can make money, which ultimately is something that every business has to do, unfortunately, but that is the reality."

Competition in the UK's restaurant food delivery market is set to intensify, with US tech giant Uber confirming last week that it plans to launch UberEats in the UK.

Unlike other food-delivery companies, Deliveroo has launched a series of pop-up kitchens in car parks that restaurants can use to help them meet demand from Deliveroo's customers during times when their normal kitchens may already be busy.

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