SoftBank Vision Fund eyes food delivery space, likely to invest $500 Mn in Zomato

After investing over $8 billion in India since 2011, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank plans to once again raid the market with a newly-launched $100 billion size SoftBank Vision Fund.

After capturing e-commerce and ride-hailing segment, SoftBank group is eyeing foodtech space with a great interest and may make investments in either of the two behemoths—Swiggy or Zomato—via its Vision Fund.

Zomato’s talks with SoftBank have advanced further than Swiggy’s discussions and Zomato is close to raising nearly $500 million in its next round, said a Mint report.

The report explained that SoftBank’s investment in Swiggy looks bleak as the former has been evaluation the food delivery company for nearly a year, but both parties haven’t reached on any agreement. However, if the deal materialises, SoftBank may become Swiggy’s largest shareholder.

Meanwhile, for the third round of funding in a year, Swiggy has initiated talks with existing and new investors to raise funds at a valuation of $2.3-2.5 billion, according to another report.

It raised $210 million from a clutch of investors as recently as in late June in a round that valued it at $1.3 billion, making the startup to join Unicorn Club.

In the past one year, as the funding round in Zomato and Swiggy received pace, the food delivery space has become a hot cake. The segment, however, has become limited to a few players such as Swiggy, Zomato, distant third Ola-owned Foodpanda and UberEats.

Amidst jostling for dominating more market share, the biggies are now further consolidating the market through acquisitions. Swiggy on Thursday announced to acquire Mumbai-based on-demand delivery startup Scootsy.

In what appears to be a distress sale, Foodpanda acquired another Mumbai-based food delivery startup Holachef.

Besides, the story of shutdowns is still continued in the space. Last week, Bluechip angels and Tracxn-backed foodtech startup Twigly stopped operations in the Gurugram.

Since 2016, many startups including TinyOwl, Eazymeals, BiteClub, Dazo and most recently Yumist and MonkeyBox had closed down as raising funds and figuring unit-economics became tough.