Zomato raises $40 M funding led by Glade Brook Private Investors

Gurugram-based foodtech unicorn Zomato has raised $40 million funding led by US-based private investors Glade Brook, according to the company's filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). This fund raise is reported to be a part of a larger $1 billion round Zomato is raising from existing investor Ant Financials and new investors. The filings suggest that Zomato closed this fund raise on Tuesday.

In October 2018, the foodtech company had raised an additional funding of $210 million led by Ant Financials. According to filings by Info Edge, which also holds stake in Zomato, its ownership in the Delhi-NCR based food delivery startup will drop to 27.68 percent from 30.91 percent with this additional capital infusion by Ant Financial. The reported valuation of Zomato is at $2 billion.

Also read: Swiggy makes first acqui-hire of the year with AI startup Kint.io

However, rival Swiggy has already raised $1 billion funding led by Naspers and other existing investors. It has been the single largest fund raise by a foodtech company in India.

Zomato joined the online food delivery market when Swiggy had already established its presence. Since then, the Delhi-based food delivery platform has been competing with the Bengaluru based unicorn. Last year, Zomato announced its entry in the B2B foodtech space by acquiring TongueStun, a Bengaluru-based online caterer and office canteen aggregator.

The Gurugram-based unicorn claims to have over 22 million monthly orders, and after acquiring delivery startup Runnr, it claims to have a delivery fleet of 1.5 lakh partners.

Deepinder Goyal, the Co-founder, wrote: “This past Sunday, we crossed over a million orders — our greatest delivery milestone so far.”

Swiggy, on the other hand, has seen a 3X increase in revenue in the last financial year. It has tied up with over 50,000 restaurants and has a delivery fleet of more than 1.2 lakh partners.

Both Swiggy and Zomato have witnessed an aggressive growth in recent times. In December 2018, Zomato acquired Lucknow-based TechEagle Innovations, which works exclusively on drones. With this acquisition, the company said it aims to create and use the technology to enable a multi-rotor drone for hub-to-hub deliveries.

This week, Swiggy announced that it has acqui-hired Kint.io, a Bengaluru-based AI startup. This is the first acqu-hire by the unicorn this year. According to research firm RedSeer, the overall foodtech market in India is estimated to reach $2.5 billion by 2021 against $700 million at present. It is clear that both the foodtech companies are looking at gobbling a big chunk of that pie.