Zomato acquires hyperlocal delivery startup Runnr in all stock deal

Online restaurant discovery and food delivery company Zomato has acquired hyperlocal logistics startup Runnr (Carthero Technologies Pvt. Ltd) in all stock deal.

As per an ET report, Runnr co-founder and CEO Mohit Kumar and the rest of the founding team will continue to run the business.

With this deal, Runnr’s 1,500 strong workforce will join Zomato but the brand will continue to function separately. Runnr currently fulfills about 300,000 orders for Zomato monthly, roughly less than 10% of the Info Edge-backed firm’s total delivery volumes.

Zomato currently fulfils delivery for over 3 million orders monthly, and only about 7 per cent of overall orders are being facilitated by Zomato through third-party delivery companies.

Recently, Zomato had integrated with the Indian ride-hailing app Ola, which will allow users to book rides and pay via the company’s mobile wallet, Ola Money.

"About 95% of our orders come from the food delivery sector with the remaining from pharma, e-commerce and grocery. While Zomato forms about 85% of the food delivery orders currently, we hope to stabilise it to about 50-55% over time," said Mohit Kumar, CEO of Runnr.

Also Read: Alibaba and Ant Financial to invest $200 Mn in Zomato

The transaction valued Zomato at $800 million while Runnr, which is the merged entity of Roadrunnr and TinyOwl, two of the most well-funded startups of 2015, had an enterprise value of $40 million.

Out of the $40 million ascribed to Runnr as its valuation, the investor pool comprised $25 million with the common pool (including shares held by founders and employees) being valued at $15 million.

Earlier, UberEATS and Zomato have given a term sheet to Runnr, where the offer from US-based cab-hailing application was higher.

Besides Gurugram-based Zomato, the firm has been evaluated in the past by Amazon India, which had also held talks with Swiggy for a potential investment.

Runnr: Website