CHENNAI: India’s food technology ecosystem is steaming up as investors once again flock to grab a piece of the pie. South African media giant Naspers has led an investment of $100 million in Series F funding in online food delivery firm Swiggy along with a new investor Meituan-Dianping, a Chinese e-commerce service platform.
A large part of the capital raised will be utilised towards Swiggy’s long-term strategy of introducing products and services for plugging supply gaps in the marketplace. “With this funding, we will further invest in plugging white spaces in the ecosystem, building differentiated offerings and developing our technology while keeping superlative customer experience at the core,” said Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy. The company will also invest in its new supply business line and continue innovating its core technology platform, especially in the areas of data-driven self-learning systems that leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence. The Bengaluru-based firm is also looking to expand its cloud kitchen model Swiggy Access, launched in November, whereby it brings delivery-only branches for partner restaurants to new localities in various cities.
This development comes exactly a week after rival Zomato closed a $200 million funding round from Alibaba’s financial arm Ant Financial, maintaining pole position. The deal values Zomato at $1.1 billion, while the latest round pegs Swiggy’s valuation at about $650million. Swiggy was last valued at $400 million when Naspers led the previous round of funding of $80-million investment in May last year.
Entry of cab aggregators such as Ola and Uber in the food ordering and delivery business has further intensified competition between the top guns. “While Uber and Ola already have a ready database from their ride-hailing services business, companies like Swiggy and Zomato will have to get into some kind of alliance to foster growth. With Zomato raising fund from Ant Financial, there could well be a tie-up with Paytm in the long run,” said Amarjeet Singh, partner (tax), KPMG India.