Zomato to start offering its own line of fitness supplements soon

Online food delivery platform Zomato will soon launch its own line of functional foods, such as dietary supplements, the company’s co-founder, and CEO, Deepinder Goyal announced in a tweet on Tuesday. Goyal did not specify when exactly these supplements will be available on the platform. 

According to Entrackr's sources, Zomato will start the new vertical in the first half of April.  We have reached out to Zomato for more details. 

The supplements would be delivered by Zomato’s delivery agents, in an average of 15 minutes, Goyal said while responding to a question on Twitter. In response to another question, Goyal said that the “country of origin” of the products is India, and that they have gone through the “highest possible levels of quality checks”. 

Zomato’s foray into offering functional foods comes just months after it had acquired full-stack sports platform Fitso, in a deal worth Rs 80-100 crore. Fitso offers a subscription service, using which users can engage in sporting activities such as swimming, basketball and tennis, among others. 

Entrackr had exclusively reported on the acquisition in January 2021. At the time, sources had emphasised that the acquisition will allow the company to enter into the fitness space. 

In February, the online food delivery major had raised  $250 million, at a valuation of $5.4 billion, in a round led by Kora Management. Before that, in December 2020, the company had raised $600 million. 

According to Fintrackr, Zomato’s losses grew 2.4X to Rs 2,385.6 crore in FY20. The company, which is gearing for an IPO in 2021, also registered a 98.4% surge in its collections to Rs 2,605 crore in FY20 from Rs 1312.6 crore in FY19.

Consumption of food supplements focused on athletes and fitness enthusiasts has increased at a quick pace in the past five years. Besides Venkys, Healthkart has been able to corner a decent market share amongst tier II and III cities. Zomato appears to have been targeting a large market that is still unorganised. Going forward, it would be interesting to see how this new vertical fares up for the IPO-bound company.