Food delivery company Takeaway.com is hoping to raise €175 million from an IPO

Food delivery platform Takeaway.com is hoping to raise €175 million (£146 million) in a stock market listing that will take place in the coming weeks.

The Dutch company, which is a rival to Britain's already-public Just Eat and Germany's Delivery Hero, announced on Tuesday that it is planning to IPO on Euronext - the Amsterdam stock exchange.

It intends to use the money to fund its growth, as well as pay for marketing and development of its mobile app and website.

Founded in 2000, Takeaway.com has created a platform where restaurants that already offer food delivery can upload their menus and take orders. There were 30,486 restaurants on the platform at the end of June and seven million active customers at the end of March.

The company operates in France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Portugal, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Vietnam. It closed down its UK business last month in order to concentrate on other markets, providing it with approximately €1 million (£836,000) per annum in additional capital, the company said.

While announcing the IPO, Takeaway.com said it made a loss of €11.5 million (£9.6 million) in the first six months of 2016, on sales of €50.5 million (£42.2 million). The company's sales growth rate has averaged over 50% annually since 2013.

Jitse Groen, CEO of Takeaway.com, said in a statement: "Takeaway.com started in 2000 in an attic in the Netherlands and has grown to become a market leader in online food delivery in Continental Europe.

"Over the years, we have developed a scalable, secure and global IT platform, which has enabled us to increase the number of partner restaurants delivering food and the number of consumers ordering food from them. We see significant opportunities for further growth as people order more and more food delivery with their mobile devices from home or wherever they are.

"I am very pleased to announce the intention to float today, as I believe this to be a pivotal next step forward to realise our future growth potential. The listing will provide Takeaway.com with additional capital to strengthen our operations and to fund our marketing efforts with the aim of enhancing our proposition to our consumers. We intend to bring Takeaway.com to the next level, in collaboration with our partner restaurants and our highly motivated management team and staff."