Restaurant discovery and online food ordering service Zomato has raised Rs 284 crore (approx $39.74 million) in funding from a US investor Glade Brook Capital Partners as part of its Series I financing round that started with Ant Financial’s Rs 1,539 Cr investment in November 2018.
The Gurgaon-based company issued 13,000 Class 1 preference shares to the investor on February 5, according to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies which were sourced from business signals platform paper.vc. The company raised the capital at a valuation of around $2 billion.
ET had reported on Jan 2 that Zomato was in talks to raise between $500 million and $1 billion to take on rival Swiggy that raised a gargantuan $1 billion late last year at a $3.3 billion valuation. The two companies are locked in a battle for leadership in India’s fast-growing online food ordering space.
While the new round could be led by Primavera Capital and existing backer Ant Financial, people familar with the matter had told ET at the time that it could be a syndicate round, seeing the participation from several smaller investors like Glade Brook Capital.
Last month, Zomato claimed that it has achieved a 28 million monthly order run rate as of December 2018, a significant bump up from previously disclosed 21 million monthly run rate in October. Order run rate helps project future order volume for the month and is calculated based on one week’s volume.
Zomato’s dine-in subscription service Gold, also claims to have brought on board 7 lakh members and over 6,000 restaurant partners, up from 6 lakh members and 4,000 restaurants. The company’s reward programme Piggybank had 1.5 million subscribers, as of December 2018, Zomato said last month.
Zomato ended FY18 with a 40% growth in revenues at Rs 466 crore. The firm also cut its corners squeezing losses by almost 73% to come in at Rs 106 crore in FY18 as compared to Rs 390 crore in FY17, according to financial documents filed with the Registrar of companies. In comparison, rival Swiggy registered a 232% surge in revenue in FY18 at Rs 442 crore, with losses of Rs 397 crore.
Zomato has also been rolling out a slew of new initiatives like its events business Zomaland to diversify beyond food delivery segment.
Leave a Reply