India’s recent 21 days lockdown has put a dent in the business of restaurants and online food delivery apps like Swiggy, Rebel Foods and Zomato, with daily order deliveries dropping 70% to under 1 million a day from the previous 2.5 million a day and restaurants are shut for almost a month now.
Bengaluru based food delivery platform Swiggy has raised $43 million as part of its ongoing Series I round to further develop and expand its new businesses.
The food-tech player has raised the funding from Ark Impact, Korea Investment Partners, Samsung Ventures and Mirae Asset Capital Markets participated in the latest funding round.
In February, it raised $113 million led by South African internet giant Naspers, along with Hadley Harbour Master Investments and Meituan Dianping. The latest investment takes Swiggy’s total round size to $156 million, valuing the company at over $3.6 billion.
“Our focus remains to execute on our vision while building a sustainable path to profitability,” shared Rahul Bothra, CFO, Swiggy in a statement.
According to the statement, Swiggy will use these funds to further expand its new businesses and continue to invest in grocery delivery, concierge services, and micro-delivery arm SuprDaily. Swiggy entered in delivery of grocery business post Covid-19 outbreak in the country.
Similarly, its rival Zomato raised $5 Mn in Series J Round from Pacific Horizon Investment Trust PLC. According to the reports, with this new funding round Zomato’s valuation now stands at $3.25 billion, close to its rival Swiggy which stands at 3.6 billion.
Earlier in January 2020, Zomato had raised $150 million as a part of a fresh fund-raise from its existing investor Ant Financial. The food-tech firm has also announced the launch of its Gold Support Fund in a bid to support millions of restaurant workers who are facing the possibility of losing their livelihoods due to the ongoing nationwide lockdown.
Also, Delhi- based dark kitchen brand Kitchens Centre has raised $500,000 in seed capital earlier this month.
AngelList India led the investment round with participation from investors including Utsav Somani, Jake Zeller, Jonathon Swanson, Ankush Gera and Revant Bhate.
Kitchens Centre provide ready-to-move-in kitchens along with the essential technology to takeout restaurants.
The group is planning to use funding to drive aggressive expansion into new geographies to enable hyperlocal delivery.
Founded in 2019 by Lakshay Jain, the company offers turnkey solutions to cloud kitchens—right from providing commercial space and kitchen infrastructure to assisting with branding, order management, delivery and maintenance services.
It has also acquired Posify, a technology-driven management solution for F&B brands. It allows brands to manage orders on a single platform, while also helping with inventory management, billing and delivery tracking.
“Apart from significantly cutting down on capital and operational expenditure of the brands, the network effort of things like order gapping, CRM support, customer data helps them achieve an average 25% increase in sales and better payback periods after partnering with us,” shared Jain who has brands like Wow! Momo, Beijing Street etc as clients on board.
