Zomato’s shareholders offload $319 Mn worth stake in secondary deals before IPO

Zomato filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus or DRHP for its IPO on Wednesday to raise $1 billion primary capital and according to the draft, seven of its stakeholders have sold over $319 million shares in a secondary transaction executed in February 2021.

The stakeholders who partially exited from Zomato include Alipay, Nexus Sunlight Fund, Sequoia Capital, Blume Ventures, and its co-founders Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. 

The Chinese digital payments major Alipay has sold $175 million worth stake in the secondary transaction executed in February. According to Fintrackr’s estimates, post the transaction, Alipay still holds 8.33% in Zomato.

Nexus Sunlight Fund was the second largest beneficiary in the secondary transaction. The Chinese fund made $49.3 million in the transaction.

Zomato’s early backer Sequoia Capital has sold shares worth $25 million whereas Nexus has transferred its shares to Moore Strategic Ventures for $25.4 million.

Blume Ventures sold its shares to the tune of $7 million to the Fidelity Group.

Nexus and Blume acquired their stakes in Zomato via Runnr after the latter was absorbed by the food tech major in 2017 in an estimated deal worth $40 million.

Zomato’s chief executive officer Deepinder Goyal has offloaded 0.63% stake worth $32.4 million. At present, Goyal holds 5.51% stake in the company he co-founded 11 years ago.

While the company’s board had recently appointed him as MD until 2026 with an increased basic pay of Rs 3.5 crore per annum, Goyal has requested the board to waive off his salary for the next 36 months.

Pankaj Chaddah, the second co-founder of Zomato, has transferred part of his stake to Fidelity for a consideration of $5 million. Currently, Chaddah owns less than 1% stake in Zomato. He had parted ways from the company in March 2018 and now runs the mental fitness startup Mindhouse.

Info Edge, which is the largest stakeholder in Zomato with an 18.55 % stake, invested Rs 144.3 crore in total. In the upcoming IPO, InfoEdge will be offloading a small part of its holding for $100 million via Offer For Sale (OFS) giving it a bumper return on its early bet in Zomato.