Restaurant aggregator and food delivery company Zomato has raised US$660 million (over ₹4,850 crore), taking its valuation to ₹3.9 billion. CEO Deepinder Goyal tweeted on Friday evening that the company had added 10 new investors, including Tiger Global, Kora, Luxor, Fidelity (FMR), D1 Capital, Baillie Gifford, Mirae, and Steadview. Zomato is also in the process of closing a $140 million secondary transaction.
Some of these companies had also participated in a funding round in November, when a total of $195 million (₹1,452.4 crore) was invested into the company, including Kora Management, Luxor Capital Group, Mirae Asset, Steadview Capital, and Bailie Gifford. In October, Kora Investments pumped in $52 million into the company. In September, MacRitchie Investments, a subsidiary unit of Singapore-based Temasek Holdings, had invested $60 million.
The tailwinds for food delivery businesses are clearly visible, and we believe that the growth of the sector will accelerate post vaccine.
2/n— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) December 18, 2020
In September this year, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal announced intention to take the company public in 2021. Bankers and legal advisors have reportedly been hired. Info Edge executive Chintan Thakkar said last month that Zomato was indeed preparing for an IPO, but defining timelines was a premature question to answer.
Goyal said that Zomato is clocking 25% higher GMV than its peaks in February 2020. December is expected to be the highest ever GMV month in the company’s history, Goyal said. In November, Zomato had said its food delivery business had crossed pre-COVID levels, operating at around 110% of pre-COVID GMV (gross merchandise value). However, it also cautioned that while the signs are now encouraging, this growth in order volumes has not been “uniform”, and the “overall food service industry is still far from full recovery”.
Earlier this year, Zomato’s fundraising efforts were affected by intensifying Indo-China tensions. Zomato had raised $150 million from existing investor Ant Financial, the payments arm of China’s Alibaba Group in January, but only $50 million came through as relations between the two countries soured. Ant Group later claimed in its now-suspended IPO filing that India’s changed FDI rules had forced it to reevaluate “the timing of our additional investment” in Zomato.
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