Zomato, Swiggy in Talks To Raise New $200 Mn Each from Alibaba, DST Global Respectively

​Hardly three months after raising $200 million from Ant Financials, Zomato is reportedly in talks to raise another fresh $200 million from Alibaba. Coincidentally, Zomato's competitor Swiggy is also close to raise fresh funds up to same amount of $200-million in a new financing round with participation from Yuri Milner’s DST Global, Coatue Management, and Meituan-Dianping, a Beijing, China-based food review and delivery giant.

In February, Alibababa had invested $200 million in Zomato through its affiliate Ant Financials, however this time, Alibaba is looking to directly back the Gurgaon-based food delivery startup in a $200-million financing round, which will peg Zomato’s valuation at $1.5 billion, according to the people privy to funding talks of Zomato.

According to sources cited in a Times of India report, while Zomato’s financing round is in an early stage, Swiggy has already closed its $200-million fund-raise, valuing it at $1 billion after the investment. Although, an official announcement Swiggy's fresh fund-raise is still awaited.

It may be recalled that the new fund-raise of Swiggy is coming at times when it was reported that beside delivering foods online, the startup is also close to start delivering medicines and grocery as it looks to diversify its business model and boost volume beyond just food ordering. This new service will be named as 'Dash'.

The decision of Alibaba to double its investment in Zomato comes right after the Alibaba group bought out China’s food delivery service Ele.me.

Uber, on other hand, is expected to invest $200 million into its food delivery business, UberEats, in India. While Ola, with its recently bought Foodpanda, has already anticipating a substantial growth of its food delivery business in line with other players by committing $200 million in it.

With infuse of fresh capital of about $800 Mn to $1 Bn in food delivery segment startups including all four -- Zomato, Siggy, UberEat and Ola's Foodpanda -- consumers in India can expect increased discounts and promotions, thanks to cut-throat competition ignited by upcoming funding spree into this segment.

Notably, the food delivery segment in India is heating up with new players like UberEats, Ola’s acquisition, for which Ola has committed to invest additional $200 million, to get the slice of food delivery business in India. And now, British food delivery unicorn startup Deliveroo entering the Indian market as well.

According to the sources tracking the sector, Swiggy is currently the largest online food delivery app with about 10 million orders per month while Zomato is clocking approximately 7.5 million orders monthly. Latest numbers for Foodpanda were 40,000 monthly orders, while UberEats was at 20,000-25,000.

Via - Economic Times | Top Image - InShorts.com

Ola To Get $500 Mn Funding From DST Global At $2.5 Billion Valuation

Indian home-grown ridesharing app company Ola Cabs is all set to get between $400 million and $500 million Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's investment fund DST Global. Ola is in advance talk stage for getting this whopping investment which could make Ola to be valued at $2.5 billion.

The funding speculation comes on the back of Ola's acquisition of TaxiForSure, making the combined entity the largest tech-backed cab aggregator service in the country.

The final terms of the financing deal are currently being negotiated, as per reports. The latest round of fund-raise for Ola puts it right up in the league of the most valuable internet firms in India.

In May 2014, DST Global invested $200 million in Flipkart. DST Global has already made investments in China's largest cab-hailing app company KuaiDi Dache, which is backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Japan's SoftBank Corp.

E-Commerce giant Flipkart is currently valued at over $11 billion while Snapdeal valued at $2-billion post investment of SoftBank Corp. Ola's $210-million fund-raise, led by Japan's SoftBank Corp in October last year, valued it at around $650 million (pre-investment).

DST Global, Milner is an investor in Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, Flipkart, Spotify, ZocDoc, Groupon, 360Buy.com, Planet Labs, and Alibaba.

Flipkart raises fresh $1bn funding; biggest ever fund-raising by an Indian e-comm company

India's e-commerce giant Flipkart has raised over $1 billion (Rs 6,000 crore) of fresh funding, reported Economic Times and this is the biggest fund-raising by an Indian e-commerce company ever. The company will announce the news of its funding in a week or two.

Half of the funding amount will come from existing investors Tiger Global, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's DST Global and Accel Partners while the rest will come from several new investors. As per sources, the interested investors who wants to invest in Flipkart are - Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC and US based investment firm T Rowe Price.

With this new funding round Flipkart has raised over $1.7 billion funds and company's valuation is now over $5 billion. Flipkart surely became India's leading e-commerce company among billion dollar club of India.

The fresh Flipkart funding is not biggest in India but globally as well for year 2014 and the highest been Silicon Valley-based startup Uber who earlier raised $1.2 billion of funding, Flipkart is just second to it in worldwide funding. This brings out the Indian startup ecosystem to global limelight and investors will surely eye towards Indian startups from this time onwards.

The new funding will boost Flipkart to compete with global e-commerce giant Amazon and India's homegrown e-commerce comany Snapdeal. Notably Amazon has biggest inventory of products and got deep pockets comparing to Indian e-commerce companies. The whooping $1 billion funding will surely give Flipkart confidence to stand against Amazon in India's online market.

Earlier in May this year, Flipkart raised $210 million from Yuri Milner’s DST Global and its existing investors Tiger Global, Naspers and Iconiq Capital.

Recently, Flipkart has acquired Myntra.com, another major online fashion store of India and the acquisition was an estimated INR 2,000 crore deal and also crossed $1 billion in sales in March this year.

It was also highly speculated that Flipkart was in negotiations to raise at least $500 million, for a likely listing in the US for 2016.

Flipkart raises $210 million to utilize in Myntra acquisition

Just after the Myntra acquisition Flipkart raised $210 million in a fresh round of funding from a group of four investors led by internet-focused investment group DST Global besides existing investors, Tiger Global, Naspers and Iconiq Capital.

Flipkart will use the funds to increase its capabilities and strength of its technology and acquiring firms across areas like e-commerce, technology and supply chain.

DST Global is a technology-focused investment firm founded by Russian Internet tycoon Yuri Milner better known for its investment in Facebook.

Just last week, Flipkart, acquired the country's biggest online apparel store Myntra.com for around $300 million estimated Rs 2,000 crore. This was Flipkart fifth acquisition since 2010, earlier Flipkart has bought Weread.com,Mime360, ChakPak.com and Letsbuy.com.

With this round of funding, the total amount of fund raised by Flipkart is estimated at around $750 million (Rs 9,000 crore) since its inception in 2007. It had also announced that the company will invest $100 million (around Rs 600 crore) in its fashion business in the next 12-18 months.

The company will also continue to invest in warehouses and logistics to facilitate the 3,000 sellers on its platforms to do more business. Flipkart offers over 15 million products across 70 categories to its 18 million registered users and 3.5 million daily visitors. Its technology enables 5 million shipments/month.

According to Alexa Internet, Flipkart's website is one of the top 10 Indian websites.