Take Eat Easy is shutting down its food delivery business as Uber muscles in

Take Eat Easy, the Belgium-founded food delivery startup, is shutting down after running out of money to sustain itself.

Founded in 2013, Take Eat Easy struggled to raise a new round of funding in recent weeks and is going into administration as a result.

The company will cease trading from July 26 2016.

Take Eat Easy raised €16 million (£13 million) last year but it needed more in order to compete with the huge marketing budgets of companies like Uber and Deliveroo, who have raised $12.5 billion (£10 billion) and $200 million (£152 million) respectively.

The Brussels-headquartered company, which employs 160 people (including 20 in London), reached a significant landmark in its history last week, achieving 1 million deliveries across the four markets it operates in (France, Belgium, Spain, and the UK) but it was still operating at a loss.

"We haven't been able to raise additional capital to fuel the company until break-even," wrote Take Eat Easy CEO and cofounder Adrien Roose in $4 on Medium on Tuesday. "We've started working on our Series C in October 2015. We knew we had to gear up as one of our $4, now Foodora, and Deliveroo had just raised a $4. Unfortunately for us, they raised and announced an even $4 a couple of weeks later. That didn't help."

Roose said that after being rejected by 114 VC funds he finally landed a €30 million Series C funding round with a French, state-owned logistics group in March. However, this funding was recently pulled.

"Unfortunately, after 3 months of intensive due diligence, their board rejected the deal and they ended up withdrawing their offer," said Roose. "We were negotiating with them under an exclusivity agreement, didn't have a plan B, and only had a couple of weeks of run-way left.

"For the last 8 weeks, we've desperately tried to find solutions to keep the business alive. We've worked on both financing and acquisitions deals in parallel, unfortunately none of them materialised. We have now ran out of time to keep operating business as usual, and are filing for judicial restructuring."

Take Eat Easy UK MD told Business Insider: "The staffs' tenure is being dealt with by the administers who will adhere to local legal obligations in each territory."