DoorDash’s sales have rocketed amidst lockdown restrictions during the COVID-19 crisis.

According to CNBC, which quoted data from Edison Trends, food delivery company DoorDash grabbed 45% of delivery orders after the lockdowns started in the US in mid-March. UberEats at 28%, Grubhub at 17% and Postmates at 7% were the also-rans in the food delivery sweepstakes.

Venture investors obviously liked the numbers, because they just forked over $400 million to DoorDash, valuing it at an impressive $16 billion in a Series H round.

The funding could delay an IPO

The new funding was led by Durable Capital Partners and Fidelity. Existing investors, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates also participated.

When it last raised an amount of $600 million in May 2019 in a Series G round, it was valued at $12.6 billion.

However, the funding raises a question mark over the company’s IPO. In February, DoorDash confidentially submitted a draft S-1 filing, flagging off the process for listing on the public exchanges alongside Uber (NYSE: UBER) and Grubhub (NYSE: GRUB).

Meanwhile, the large sums of capital raised by DoorDash are a testament to the high competition in the food delivery market.

Competitive pressures

The sector is seeing a lot of both of VC investments and M&A deal-making.

Last week Instacart announced that it had raised $225 million in an investment round led by venture capital firms DST Global and General Catalyst, pushing its valuation up to $13.7 billion. It said it “continues to experience an unprecedented surge in customer demand” because of home-bound customers ordering groceries for delivery.

Just Eat Takeaway.com pipped Uber to the post in the race to acquire Grubhub and got a foothold in the U.S.

“Grubhub being acquired by a larger competitor will only embolden the market share battle just at the same time that the regulatory environment around delivery fees across cities is becoming a larger headwind,” wrote Wedbush analysts Dan Ives and Ygal Arounian in a note to clients.

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