Ola bought Foodpanda India operations for mere Rs 28 crore

The cat is out of the bag, Tencent-backed Ola has acquired Foodpanda for mere Rs 28 crore. Three weeks ago, the Bengaluru-based company announced the acquisition of Foodpanda.

The business intelligence platform paper.vc mentions that Delivery Hero (owner of Foodpanda globally) has invested Rs 174 crore in Ola, and then Ola pumped-in the same amount in FoodPanda India, reports BusinessLine .

Overall Delivery Hero spent Rs 202 crore to own 1 per cent stake in the local ride-hailing Unicron. This essentially means that Foodpanda India sold out in a fraction of amount its backers had put on it.

Ola is making its second attempt in food delivery space. The Bhavish Aggarwal-led company had shut food delivery service ‘Ola Cafe’ in March 2016 after completing a year of operations.

At the time of acquisition, Ola had committed an infusion of $200 million in Foodpanda. However, Rs 174 crore investment from former does not appear to be part of the committed amount, mentions the report.

Foodpanda started operations in India in June 2012, and since then burnt hundreds of crores till last year. The company had recorded a loss of over Rs 187 crore in last two fiscals.

Also read: Why ride-hailing company Ola fell for beleaguered Foodpanda

During its maiden launch, Ola Cafe couldn’t manage to strike and maintain the partnership with restaurants. The primary driver for Foodpanda acquisition is to get a hold on restaurants at dirt cheap price.

The cab-hailing service has a strong logistics capability through its bike taxi vertical.

Moreover,  is trying to follow another Softbank-funded peer Go-Jek. The Indonesian unicorn started with ride-hailing, but in 2015 it forayed into food delivery space. Currently, it does more orders than Swiggy, Zomato and Foodpanda collectively.

Ola’s arch-rival Uber had launched its food delivery app UberEATS in India in May last year. It’s currently operational in seven cities including Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru amongst others.