Uber has agreed to acquire Delivery Hero, the Berlin-based global food delivery group, in a deal that would make the American ride-hailing giant the new owner of Baemin (Baedal Minjok), South Korea's leading food delivery app. The transaction threatens to redraw the competitive map of both the global delivery market and South Korea's domestic platform economy, with far-reaching consequences for consumers, small restaurant owners, and delivery riders alike.
Why Delivery Hero is selling — and why Uber is buying
Delivery Hero paid roughly 4.75 trillion won ($4bn) in 2019 to acquire Woowa Brothers, the company behind Baemin, as its vehicle for entering the South Korean market. The bet has since soured. A global economic slowdown, persistent losses, and a collapse in investor confidence sent Delivery Hero's share price more than 90% below its 2021 peak, piling pressure on management to monetise the group's most valuable assets.
Uber, by contrast, has spent recent years sharpening its focus on profitability, with Uber Eats — its food delivery arm — at the centre of that effort. The service now operates in more than 45 countries, and delivery revenues account for over 30% of Uber's total sales. Acquiring Delivery Hero would significantly extend Uber Eats' global footprint and, crucially, give Uber a commanding position in Asia, a market it has long struggled to penetrate.
A dominant app with a fee problem
Baemin holds roughly 60% of South Korea's food delivery market — a dominance that is difficult to overstate. According to WiseApp·Retail·Goods, a South Korean app and retail analytics firm, the platform's monthly active users exceed 20 million, and its annual gross merchandise value runs to tens of trillions of won. Yet that market power has come at a cost to its reputation.
Small restaurant owners have long complained about high commission rates and advertising fees. Resentment boiled over in 2024 when Baemin raised its delivery commission from 6.8% to 9.8%, triggering an organised backlash from self-employed business owners and drawing scrutiny from politicians and regulators. How Uber — a foreign owner with its own record of aggressive fee policies — intends to manage these sensitivities will be among the most closely watched questions of the post-acquisition period.
Opportunity or threat for consumers and small businesses?
The deal has its advocates. Uber's global operational expertise and technology could improve delivery efficiency, and there is a plausible case that its scale might, over time, bring more rational fee structures. Uber has form here: in several markets, its Uber One subscription programme has been used to build customer loyalty through consumer discounts. Integrating Uber's mobility platform with Baemin's delivery infrastructure could also help stabilise the supply of riders and improve unit economics.
The sceptics, however, are vocal. Handing effective control of an essential piece of daily consumer infrastructure to foreign capital raises legitimate concerns about platform dependency. South Korea's Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) — the country's competition watchdog — are expected to examine the deal closely for signs of market abuse. Civic groups and small-business associations have warned that the logic of global capital maximisation will squeeze domestic merchants still further.
Lessons from comparable deals abroad
The global record of big-platform acquisitions in food delivery is mixed. Uber itself bought American delivery app Postmates in 2020 for around 2 trillion won, successfully boosting its share of the US market. But it also suffered a notable setback in Japan, where competition from DoorDash forced Uber Eats to retreat from parts of that market. Amazon's attempt to gain a foothold in UK delivery through its investment in Deliveroo was blocked by British regulators.
In South Korea, there is a direct precedent. When Delivery Hero originally acquired Woowa Brothers in 2019, the KFTC approved the merger only on the condition that Delivery Hero divest Yogiyo, then the country's second-largest delivery app. Uber's current bid faces a similar regulatory gauntlet. If Uber Eats is deemed to operate in the South Korean market, the combined entity could be judged to have an anticompetitive horizontal overlap — potentially requiring another round of forced disposals.
The rider question
The acquisition also reopens a contentious debate about the rights of delivery riders. South Korea has been wrestling with questions about the employment status of gig workers, their eligibility for industrial accident insurance, and the establishment of minimum delivery-fee guarantees. These are familiar battles for Uber, which has faced litigation and regulatory action over driver classification in jurisdictions around the world. The most consequential ruling came in Britain, where the Supreme Court in 2021 determined that Uber drivers were "workers" entitled to basic labour protections. How Uber chooses to handle the status of Baemin's riders will be scrutinised closely by trade unions and policymakers.
What comes next
The deal still has multiple hurdles to clear: merger reviews by competition authorities in several countries, including South Korea, and shareholder approval from Delivery Hero's investors. The KFTC's decision will be pivotal for the Korean dimension of the transaction. Industry analysts broadly expect Uber to retain Baemin as a standalone brand while gradually expanding the operational synergies with Uber Eats.
In the longer run, the acquisition signals that South Korea's food delivery market — one of the most advanced and competitive in the world — is now fully integrated into the global technology industry's consolidation wars. The two-horse race between Baemin and Coupang Eats (backed by the e-commerce giant Coupang, South Korea's answer to Amazon) is set to intensify, creating a complex dynamic in which consumer pricing competition and pressure to cut merchant commissions may pull in opposite directions. For the South Korean government and legislature, the deal is a prompt to accelerate work on platform competition rules, rider labour protections, and commission regulation — policies that have been too long in the making.