BENGALURU: India’s largest food delivery platform Swiggy on Thursday announced its largest fundraising round till date. The Bengaluru-based Bundl Technologies, which runs Swiggy, raised a whopping $1 billion in Series-H funding round led by its existing investor Naspers.
The company, which competes with Ola-owned Foodpanda, Uber-owned UberEats and Zomato, has so far raised a total of $1.26 billion.
According to sources, the South African media group will invest about $660 million in Swiggy as part of the funding round. Earlier this week, Edutech start-up Byju’s had raised $540 million (about `3,866 crore) led by Naspers.
Through the fresh capital infusion, which includes both primary and secondary share sales, new investors like Chinese major Tencent, Hillhouse Capital and Wellington Management Company will become stakeholders in the company. The round also saw participation from several existing investors including DST Global, Meituan Dianping and Coatue Management. It will also provide a partial or complete exit for some of the early investors like Accel Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.
The growing online food discovery and delivery segment has become the preferred investment destination for venture capital and private equity players. The segment, which saw a bloodbath in 2016 with companies shutting down operations, several employees losing jobs and shrinkage of funding, is now seeing a turnaround. The cash crunch had even resulted in firms like Yumist, TinyOwl, Spoonjoy, Dazo and Eatonomist, shutting shop.
Swiggy’s latest fundraising round is the single largest in India’s food technology sector to date. According to a statement from the company, it will utilise the funds to bring more quality food brands closer to consumers and address gaps in supply through delivery-only kitchens under the ‘Access’ initiative for restaurant partners.
“Swiggy has been at the forefront of elevating the potential of Indian food delivery with its industry-changing innovations and focus on delivering the best consumer experience to millions of Indians,” said Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy.
The company will further strengthen its technology backbone and focus on building a next-generation AI-driven platform for hyperlocal discovery and on-demand delivery. “Swiggy will use the capital to hire top-notch talent, especially for machine learning and engineering roles across mid and senior levels,” the company said.
In June this year, Swiggy had raised $210 million in funding, making it to the unicorn club. The current round of funding is at a valuation of $3.3 billion, making the company the fifth largest unicorn after Paytm, Ola, Oyo and Byju’s.
Since the last funding round six months ago, Swiggy has expanded to 42 more cities and doubled in gross merchandise value. It also claims to hae doubled its GMV in six months.