Zomato secures $150 Mn from Ant Financial at $3 Bn valuation

Online food delivery and restaurant discovery platform Zomato has secured $150 million in a funding round led by existing Chinese investor Ant Financial.

The Gurugram-based company has been valued at $3 billion after this round, a significant jump from its $2 billion valuation in March last year.

Importantly, Zomato has been served with the first tranche worth $150 million after being in advanced talks of raising $600 million from Ant Financial and Singapore-headquartered Temasek for the past two months.

The company would be utilizing these funds towards improving its competitive standing against its rival Swiggy, which is also in talks to raise $500 million from Korea Investment Partners, Mirae Asset Management and others at a valuation of approx $4 billion, said an Economic Times report.

The development has come at a time when Zomato is engaged in conversations to acquire UberEats for the past several months and according to the latest media reports, the deal is only a few steps away from getting sealed. If this transaction gets through, Uber may invest $100-200 million of fresh capital in the joint entity.

In October last year, Zomato had also declared its financial performance for the first half (H1) of the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2020, or FY20, in which the firm had claimed an increase of about 225% in its half-yearly revenues to $205 million. 

Zomato’s GMV for H1 2020 stood at $821 million in comparison to $254 million made during the corresponding period in the last fiscal year. During the first half, the Deepinder Goyal-led firm also managed to cut down its burn rate by 60% from what it was six months ago.

Meanwhile, its biggest rival Swiggy has recorded a 2.7X jump in operating revenue to Rs 1,121 crore in FY19 from Rs 417 crore in FY18. However, while chasing scale, its net losses rose 500% amounting to Rs 2345 crore in the last fiscal.

At present, Zomato claims to host more than 1.4 million active restaurants and deliver about 40 million orders a month.