SoftBank Looking At Investing In Zomato

SoftBank, Japan based investment firm, is looking at opening investments in the restaurant discovery and food delivery platform, Zomato. Six months after the initial talks, the investment platform is working at investing around $ 250 million in the homegrown food delivery platform. The investment firm also held multiple conversations with Swiggy for a possible investment. Two people involved and familiar with the conversation said, “(Swiggy) is of the view that it is still little early to raise a large cheque from the Japanese firm.”

According to reports, SoftBank is in talks to invest in different areas of Zomato, spanning over the platform’s three main metrics as well as Zomato’s international expansion plans over the next few years. In Zomato’s last round of funding the platform raised $ 200 million from Chinese based e commerce platform, Alibaba’s payments affiliate, Alipay.

This new development comes shortly after SoftBank’s decision on whether or not it wants to sell more than 20% of its stake post the Flipkart take over by Walmart. “SoftBank discussed business metrics across Zomato’s three main business lines. One of the points of conversations revolved around Zomato’s international expansion over next few years,” said the person pointing out that “there is no guarantee the conversations will materialize into an investment.”

While SoftBank is still scanning India’s food delivery space looking to finalize a candidate for a likely investment of  $ 200 to 400 million, a final decision on its investment is likely to be taken by the end of the year. With the food industry increasing by 125 % in the year 2017, international investors are looking at increasing their hold on the growing food sector in the Indian market. With order values increasing to 4 to 5 lakhs a day, the food sector is definitely increasing at a fast and continuously growing pace. SoftBank is also the largest shareholder in the cab hailing applications Ola and Uber, both of which acquired and launched food delivery services last year.