The battle of foodtech in India will become more intense as offshore funding is coming in galore. Soon after Swiggy, Zomato has picked up around $40 million fund from US-based investor Glade Brook Capital Partners.
This is a part of the earlier round that the company raked in November led by Alibaba payments affiliate Alipay.
According to data intelligence platform paper.vc, Zomato issued 13,000 Class 1 preference shares to Glean Brook on February 5. The fund infusion valued the Gurugram-based firm at about $2 billion and comes at a time when Zomato is reportedly negotiating a bigger round of up to $1 billion.
The food delivery and restaurant discovery platform was in discussions with Chinese private equity major Primavera Capital and Ant Financial along with other investors for the next round.
However, Zomato doesn’t want Ant Financial to gain any more stake in it and looking to onboard a new investor. Goldman Sachs has already been appointed with a mandate to solidify the fundraising campaign.
Meanwhile, Zomato is also looking to raise $200-250 million by selling its UAE business to Berlin-based food tech major Delivery Hero.
The company’s arch-rival Swiggy recently scooped up $1 billion round led by Naspers. Currently, the collective monthly burn rate of Zomato and Swiggy constitutes around 80 per cent of the total burn rate by the top four players that include UberEats and foodpanda.
Of late, Zomato has been expanded its footprint in around 150 cities. In December last year, Zomato claimed 28 million monthly order run rate. It’s a significant 7 million up from October when the Alibaba-backed firm had claimed 21 million monthly order run rate.
The Deepinder Goyal-led company has also forged a partnership with payments major Paytm to target customers across tier II and tier III cities.
The development was reported by ET.
