The food tech startup, Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd, announced today (15/05/2017) that it is in advanced talks with the food delivery startup, Runnr, to acquire it for US $20 million. This acquisition is expected to help Zomato strengthen its food delivery business. If this acquisition goes through, Zomato will increase its number of food delivery personal dramatically, exceeding even its arch rival, Swiggy. Zomato currently has tie-ups with a number of restaurants on its platform and relies of third party food delivery startups like Runnr to deliver its food orders. Prior to this proposed acquisition, Zomato had bought a minority stake in Grub Services Pvt. Ltd for an undisclosed amount to fulfill its food delivery orders. Read more on Acquisitions
Zomato was founded in May, 2015. In a blog post in April, 2017, Zomato chief of staff, Surobhi Das said that the company clocked a net profit of US $9 million in the financial year that ended on 31st March, 2017, an eight fold growth over the same quarter during the FY, 2016. The company’s advertising revenue grew by 58% this quarter, to US $38 million. Zomato claims to have recorded 2.1 million orders during March, 2017. In comparison, its arch rival Swiggy clocked a net profit of US $4 million during the financial year that ended during March, this year (2017) and claims to have recorded 1 million food delivery orders during March, this year (2017).
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Runnr, backed by Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Ventures and Sequoia Capital, has struggled to raise funds in the recent past. It has raised about US $20-25 million since inception in 2015. Runnr may find this acquisition by Zomato quite useful for it to get out of its financial crisis. Other food delivery startups that got funded this year (2017) include Faasos which had raised Rs. 41 crores in Series D round of funding led by Lightbox Ventures II, Lightbox Expansion Fund, Sequoia Capital India, RuNet South Asia and RB Investments and Ketchupp which had raised Rs. 3 crores seed funding from India Quotients and a clutch of angel investors. Read more on Startup News
