India’s biggest food ordering and delivery company, Swiggy, could raise a fresh round of funding close to $600 million or even more marking its biggest fundraise to date. The speculated funding will be born by Swiggy’s existing investor and largest share holder Naspers of South Africa, reported Bloomberg today, citing people privy to the ongoing development at Naspers.
Naspers, which is planning to increase its stake in Swiggy, could also buy stakes from Swiggy’s other existing investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, said the report. Nasper has 22% stake in Swiggy, as of March 2018.
Besides Nasper, Tencent Holdings Ltd. can also participate in this possible fundraise of Swiggy. It is to be noted that Naspers owns a 31% controlling stake in Tencent.
If this funding falls through then this will be Swiggy’s third round of funding within a year. The food delivery startup had last raised $210 million in June this year and funding round was led by Digital Sky Technologies and Naspers. Prior to this, Swiggy had raised $100 million again from Naspers, along with China’s Meituan-Dianping.
This plausible fundraise report comes at time when just a few days back Swiggy’s biggest India rival Zomato had raised a fresh capital of $210 million from Alibaba’s payment affiliate Ant Financial.
Naspers, which also has shares in India’s travel firm MakeMyTrip and classifieds business OLX, has targeted India for investments as the company seeks to repeat its Tencent and Flipkart success. Notably, the company made a $1.6 billion profit from the sale of its 11% stake in Indian e-commerce startup Flipkart to Walmart, earlier this year.
Swiggy, which currently valued at more than $2 billion, is also planning to enter hyperlocal delivery market with its upcoming service called ‘Dash’, through which it will deliver medicines and grocery.
Founded in 2014, by Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jaimini, Swiggy is one of the fastest entrants into the billion dollar club and raised a total of $465 million since it started.
EArlier this month, it was also reported that UberEATS, the food delivery unit of Uber, had held talks with Swiggy for possible acquisition of later, a few months ago. However, the acquisition could not materialize and now Swiggy is reportedly closing a fresh funding round from Chinese investor and WeChat owner Tencent.
Meanwhile, Zomato is building its own digital wallet to prevent its users going out of its ecosystem while making payments online.
Source: IndianWeb2
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