talks with Investment as much as $500 million in GrofersCook it, people close to the development told ET Delivery and the largest of the restaurant platform Investment In one company so far. The proposed deal expands its food delivery battle with Swiggy in the so-called ultrafast Business segment, which is attracting sluggish investor capital globally.

Sources said the financing would value the Albinder Dhindsa-led Grofers at around $1.5 billion, when above $1 billion.
Zomato first invested in a SoftBank-backed startup earlier this year With a check for $100 million.

One of the people mentioned above said, “The two companies are in talks and Zomato is most likely to invest the entire $500 million.” “There have been some discussions with SoftBank and others, but they have not yet materialised.”

Zomato is doubling down on Grofers to strengthen its instant delivery play.

$1-Billion Investment Plan

Big bet on Grofers
Zomato’s repeated, repeated attempts at grocery delivery throughout the last year. If the transaction goes through, the fresh capital will increase Zomato’s stake in Grofers to around 30%. SoftBank holds about 45% stake in Vision Fund Grofers as its largest shareholder, while Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital are common investors in Zomato and Kirana etailer.

Representatives for Zomato and Grofers said they have no comment on ET’s query regarding the investment deal.

Deepinder Goyal-led Zomato
who had a bumper listing In July, there is an investment race in the Indian stock markets. Logistics tech firms like it tracked startups
Shiprocket, Discovery Platform MagicPin for Offline Retailers and Fitness Platform CureFit, as part of its strategy to deploy $1 billion in young companies.

Last week, while announcing Zomato’s quarterly results, Goyal said in a blogpost, “Among all the businesses we are looking at today, accelerated commerce (delivery of products in less than 30 minutes) is clearly the most promising one.” emerging as one of While we have decided not to build instant commerce on our platform, we are excited about the progress our partner company Grofers has made in the 10-minute delivery space. We are likely to invest more in this area in the near future…”

global gameplan

What Zomato wants to do is make a playbook similar to that used by Chinese Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent, investing in ecosystem players that either lead to windfall profits or potential M&A opportunities.

Closer Home, InfoEdge, which runs job portals, Jeevansathi among other sites, has styled itself as a corporate venture capital firm. Two of its portfolio firms – Zomato and PB Fintech, which run PolicyBazaar – have forayed into the Indian public markets.

Goyal
told ET in an exclusive interview last month That the company was looking to support businesses that would add more than $10 billion to its market capitalization. “We are investing in some really good founders and companies – all in synergistic or adjacent areas of our business. We hope that over time, some of these will choose to merge with Zomato to continue on their growth path We are not asking any of these founders or companies for future M&A rights. We want the chemistry to work here,” he had said.

Grofers is likely to merge with Zomato – something that has been said as a likely outcome, going forward. Goyal had told ET that in a worst-case scenario, Grofers’ bet would be like a financial investment that would give some returns to the company. “Hopefully, this is not a financial but a strategic one. And we’ll see if it makes sense for us to merge at some point. But it is too early to say anything now,” he had said last month.

swiggy push

Zomato’s move to double down on the fast-growing instant delivery segment, which is registering rapid growth with new and existing players, comes on the back of rival Swiggy, which prioritizes its Instamart, which is available in 15-30 minutes. Specializes in grocery delivery.

in one
Interview with ET in JulySwiggy’s Sriharsha Majeti said 25% of the company’s revenue was coming from non-food delivery businesses, which it is looking to grow over the next five years.

Majetti said Swiggy plans to use the new $1.25 billion funding To invest heavily in non-food sectors like hyperlocal grocery and essential delivery service Instamart.

And
informed of On September 28, Swiggy was in talks to close another financing round at a valuation of $10 billion, which was double that of its previous round led by US asset manager Invesco, which is expected by Zomato’s market cap. Re-rating is exercise.

On Wednesday, Zomato’s stock ended the day’s trading down nearly 1% at Rs 156.65 on the Bombay Stock Exchange, with a market cap of Rs 1.23 lakh crore.

quick commercial discussion

Following the rapid adoption of online grocery aided by the COVID-19 pandemic, platforms are bringing back small warehouses with quick delivery within neighborhoods – what they call dark stores. Dark stores are small warehouses in dense areas of a city from where orders can be received quickly.

The hyperlocal delivery model emerged as a fad in 2015-16 but was short-lived. Startups like Grofers, PaperTap (which closed down in 2016) were early proponents of this model.

On Wednesday, Grofers said in a blogpost that he
200 dark stores opened in last three months And 150 more will be added in the next 45 days. Industry sources said Instamart and Grofers can do 80,000-100,000 deliveries per day. Grofers, which has undergone several changes and changes in its business model over the years, is now increasingly focusing on the grocery delivery segment, as it moves away from scheduled deliveries. BigBasket is the largest player in the scheduled grocery delivery market.

Mumbai’s new kid on block Zepto also works in the quick commerce grocery category and recently
raised $60 million, led by US investment fund Glade Brooke Capital, an investor in Zomato and US grocery startup Instacart. Zepto is the only startup to offer this service as a core offering in a market dominated by big players like Instamart, Dunzo and Tata Group-backed BigBasket.