Swiggy tops up Series I round; onboards Tencent’s MD as non-exec director

Foodtech major Swiggy has been in the headlines the past few months over fundraising, expansion of its ESOP pool, departure of its co-founder and most recently for layoffs in the company.

Despite the COVID-19 crisis, Swiggy has also expanded its services, piloted new features and continued to top up its ongoing fundraising round. The Bengaluru-based unicorn, once again, has topped up its Series I round with Rs 14.24 crore investment from existing backer Samsung Ventures.

The South Korean conglomerate’s venture capital arm has picked up 602 Series I CCPS along with an equity share at a price of Rs 236,130 each in this tranche to take its investment in the Naspers-backed company to Rs 57 crore in total. Post this investment Samsung Venture Investment Corporation will control around 0.24% stake in Swiggy.

In FY21, the total investment in Series I round has grown to Rs 320.54 crore, as per the company’s regulatory filing with India’s ministry of corporate affairs.

During the same board meeting, Swiggy also passed a special resolution to appoint Daniel Joram Brody, managing director of Tencent Investment, as a non-executive nominee director in the company. Brody is also on the board of directors of companies such as Etechaces Marketing and Consulting Private Limited, Miniclip Group S.A. and Pocket Gems, Inc.

To recall, Tencent had invested Rs 142.5 crore in Swiggy’s Series I round that kicked off in February. Tencent now holds 5.89% stake in the company through its Netherlands based subsidiary Tencent Cloud Europe B.V.

This development comes soon after Swiggy laid off 1,100 staff mainly from its cloud kitchen division as part of downsizing its business due to the impact of the COVID-19 induced lockdown. After Zomato, Paytm and Udaan, Swiggy was the fourth unicorn in the consumer internet space to opt for mass layoffs.

Earlier this month, Rahul Jaimini, co-founder and CTO of Swiggy, had also left the company to join Pesto Tech, a career accelerator startup, as its co-founder.