How many e‑commerce man­agers out there would like to attract a $30 mil­lion invest­ment in their third year of busi­ness? Quite a lot, it’s safe to wager, but very few will suc­ceed. But join­ing the ranks of that elite “very few” is the Berlin-based online food deliv­ery ser­vice, Deliv­ery Hero, which has just put $30m into its bank account cour­tesy of a new fund­ing round led by Phe­nomen Ven­tures (exist­ing investors also participated).

It’s enough to make the job­bing e‑commerce man­ag­er turn a light shade of envi­ous green, even as they smile in admi­ra­tion. Espe­cial­ly as the lat­est cash injec­tion comes less than a year after the start­up secured a cool $50 mil­lion in Series D fund­ing (Kite Ven­tures led that round).

Who’ll be left stand­ing in the deliv­ery space?

So what, the curi­ous e‑commerce man­ag­er might well ask, does Deliv­ery Hero have that oth­er deliv­ery e‑commerce out­fits lack?

For one thing, it’s turn­ing over $400 mil­lion every year, hav­ing part­nered suc­cess­ful­ly with local restau­rants in 14 inter­na­tion­al mar­kets, includ­ing Chi­na, the UK, Aus­tria, Aus­tralia, Poland, Rus­sia and Ger­many. And despite only appear­ing in Octo­ber 2010, it’s on course to hit prof­itabil­i­ty lat­er in 2103.

Anoth­er point: you don’t need to be a hard-bit­ten e‑commerce ana­lyst to know that merg­ers and acqui­si­tions in the “take out” deliv­ery space amount to a war in which those left stand­ing will be capa­ble of bet­ter returns on the deliv­ery busi­ness mod­el (Seam­less and Grub­Hub, for exam­ple, have just merged in the US). In Europe, Deliv­ery Hero is pit­ted against estab­lished brands such as Food Pan­da and Just Eat.

Onwards and upwards?

A spokesman for the start­up has revealed that it’s already made “great progress” since the Series D round and has so far secured total fund­ing amount­ing to $116 mil­lion equi­ty (there’s $10 mil­lion in ven­ture debt, too).

Phe­nomen Ven­tures has made one of its biggest invest­ments with Deliv­ery Hero. One of its found­ing part­ners, Dmit­ry Falkovich, declared he’d been “amazed” at the startup’s progress over the last cou­ple of years.

Deliv­ery Hero says it will plough the new mon­ey into for­ti­fy­ing its pres­ence in exist­ing mar­kets but has also made arch hints at plans to “fur­ther expand its posi­tion”.  Does that mean new mar­kets or strength­en­ing exist­ing ones?  Time will tell.