Swiggy To Raise $ 200 Million From Naspers and Tencent

Swiggy, one of India’s fastest growing online food ordering and delivery platform, is reportedly in talks with venture capital firms Naspers and Tencent to raise $ 200 million. The Bengaluru based foodtech startup initiated the discussions with Chinese investment conglomerate Tencent and existing investor Naspers for a potential investment.

A news daily reported, South African Internet group Naspers will be leading this round of funding according to three people briefed on the matter. This move to raise fresh capital comes after the company ended independent funding discussions with SoftBank and Flipkart for a $ 200 million investment. The sources also added this deal could value Swiggy at $ 600- $ 650 million before the investment. In the last Series E funding round where Swiggy raised $ 80 million from Naspers, SAIF Partners and others, the company was valued at $ 400 million.

According to sources, China based venture firm Tencent has been looking to co invest in Swiggy along with SoftBank before those discussions came to an end. However, Tencent will now be forging a strategic partnership with Naspers to join the Swiggy bandwagon as a new investor. Sources also suggest Tencent proposed to increase their investment in the startup to around $ 100 million.  

The India foodtech industry is considered to be a very lucrative sector. In November last year, Swiggy was also reported to be in talks with rival restaurant discovery and food delivery rival Zomato for a stock based merger. However, Swiggy later denied all rumors stating the company would not like to comment on baseless speculations. Swiggy was launched in 2014 by Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy, and Rahul Jaimini and since then the company grew fastest in terms of revenue. For the financial year 2016 – 2017 Swiggy’s revenue grew by six times to $ 20.6 million as losses increased by 50%. In the past three years, the foodtech firm has also managed to raise close to $155 million in equity and $8 million in debt.

After the entry of global taxi hailing startup Uber launched their food delivery service UberEATS in India, Ola also recently acquired food delivery startup Foodpanda to enter the foodtech industry.