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Naspers, the South African multinational giant has raised $80 million (Rs 517 crores approximately) in a Series E funding round for Banglore based online ordering and food delivery start-up Swiggy. The mammoth funding received by them will assist them in overperforming their immediate rival Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd.
Naspers has invested in a number of online food ordering and delivering establishments. It invested around $50 million in a Brazilian startup, iFood. It has also invested in a Mexico-based company named Sidelantal of the same niche. However, earlier this month, Naspers funded a colossal amount of $425 million to a European company Delivery Hero.
The vital funding round also saw a participation of its existing investors, Accel Partners, SAIF Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Harmony Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.
As of now, Swiggy has over 12,000 restaurants on its delivery manifesto and is spread around 8 major cities -Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Also, it delivers the food within 37 minutes once the order is placed.
Swiggy is planning to use the capital to hire Engineering talent. It wished to develop a better technology to further enhance the User Experience of its platform. Machine learning, Personalization of consumer preferences, data sciences are among a few of its targets. Also, it is aiming to increase the geographical area to further improve the reach. It has also decided to set up an advanced cloud-based kitchen model.
Swiggy is right behind its rival Zomato which has a funding of $224 million to its name. Swiggy has retrieved around $160 million from its existing investors. However, along with Food delivery, Zomato also offers Restaurant listing services. On the other hand, Swiggy is entirely into the industry of Online food ordering and delivery.
Food startups in India have been experiencing a declinal slump recently. Most of the companies have struggled to expand further. Also, they have been spending a lot of money in order to woo customers into buying their products by giving various offers and discounts. Some of the major investors also retracted their fundings when their short-term business goals were achieved.
Swiggy’s revenue mounted from a meagre Rs. 11.6 Lakh to Rs.23.6 crore in one financial year.
In all, Naspers has invested over half a billion dollars in food delivery companies and the recent funding can be a great boost for the Indian startup Swiggy.
