Swiggy May Raise Fresh $600 Mn from Existing Investor Naspers

India's biggest food ordering and delivery company, Swiggy, could raise a fresh round of funding close to $600 million or even more marking its biggest fundraise to date. The speculated funding will be born by Swiggy's existing investor and largest share holder Naspers of South Africa, reported Bloomberg today, citing people privy to the ongoing development at Naspers.

Naspers, which is planning to increase its stake in Swiggy, could also buy stakes from Swiggy's other existing investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, said the report. Nasper has 22% stake in Swiggy, as of March 2018.

Besides Nasper, Tencent Holdings Ltd. can also participate in this possible fundraise of Swiggy. It is to be noted that Naspers owns a 31% controlling stake in Tencent.

If this funding falls through then this will be Swiggy's third round of funding within a year. The food delivery startup had last raised $210 million in June this year and funding round was led by Digital Sky Technologies and Naspers. Prior to this, Swiggy had raised $100 million again from Naspers, along with China's Meituan-Dianping.

This plausible fundraise report comes at time when just a few days back Swiggy's biggest India rival Zomato had raised a fresh capital of $210 million from Alibaba's payment affiliate Ant Financial.

Naspers, which also has shares in India's travel firm MakeMyTrip and classifieds business OLX, has targeted India for investments as the company seeks to repeat its Tencent and Flipkart success. Notably, the company made a $1.6 billion profit from the sale of its 11% stake in Indian e-commerce startup Flipkart to Walmart, earlier this year.

Swiggy, which currently valued at more than $2 billion, is also planning to enter hyperlocal delivery market with its upcoming service called 'Dash', through which it will deliver medicines and grocery.

Founded in 2014, by Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jaimini, Swiggy is one of the fastest entrants into the billion dollar club and raised a total of $465 million since it started.

EArlier this month, it was also reported that UberEATS, the food delivery unit of Uber, had held talks with Swiggy for possible acquisition of later, a few months ago. However, the acquisition could not materialize and now Swiggy is reportedly closing a fresh funding round from Chinese investor and WeChat owner Tencent.

Meanwhile, Zomato is building its own digital wallet to prevent its users going out of its ecosystem while making payments online.

[Top Image - AdageIndia.com]

China's Largest Travel Portal Ctrip to Invest $100 Mn in Zomato's Financing Round

Ctrip.com International, Ltd., a China's online travel services provider having $20 billion worth of market capitlization, is reportedly about to invest around $100 million in Gurgaon headquartered online food delivery and restaurant search platform Zomato, as part of a upcoming financing round, which could go up to $400 million (Rs 2,800 crore), valuing the startup at $1.8-2 billion.

The sources, according to the report, added that the transaction is likely to close in two weeks.

Ctrip, which has just one investment in online travel agency MakeMyTrip, is a Nasdaq-listed firm founded in 1999 by James Liang, Neil Shen, Min Fan, and Qi Ji. It is currently the largest online travel agency in China.

Notably, if Ctrip makes an investment in Zomato then it will be the firm's first such bet outside of travel services.

For Zomato, if the deal with Ctrip goes through, it will help the Deepinder Goyal-led company to expand and grow aggressively in international markets.

"The discussions with Ctrip are in the last leg, with only the final amount yet to be decided. It is likely to be around $100 million. While the investment is purely financial, the two companies may explore synergies, which will be more strategic in nature going forward," reported Samidha Sharma of Times of India, quoting a source privy to the development.

Ctrip, which acquired Scottish travel site Skyscanner for $1.7 billion two years ago, also owns Tours4Fun, travel research site Trip.com and Trip by Skyscanner. It’s ranked among the top four online travel agencies worldwide along with Expedia, TripAdvisor and The Priceline group.

Interestingly, Ctrip known for its advocacy for scientific management in using rigorous data analysis in managerial decision making. One such example of the is the randomized control trial Ctrip ran on 'Telecommuting', also called as telework, which means working from home, mobile work, remote work, and flexible workplace. Telework is a work arrangement in which employees do not commute or travel to a central place of work, such as an office building, warehouse, or store.

Most recently, Zomato has acquired Bengaluru-based startup TongueStun Food for about $18 million marking the company's 12th acquisition deal globally.

Zomato, which provides in-depth information for over 1.4 million restaurants across 23 countries, had last raised $200 million in Series-I round led by Ant Financial, in February this year. The company has so far raised a total of $443.8 million in ten rounds, as per data by Crunchbase.

Zomato is behind only by Swiggy, which has recently raised $210 million in Series-G funding round led by DST Global and Naspers, in June this year. Swiggy has also raised a total of $465.5 million, a very close figure to Zomato's funding.

In fiscal 2018, Zomato had a revenue of $74 million while for the previous fiscal, its revenue was $51 million with a reported loss of $54 million.

[Top Image - FinancialTribune.com]

Helpshift Secures $23M in Series B Funding to Bring In-App Customer Support to the Masses

Helpshift, the company revolutionizing the customer support experience on mobile devices, today announced it closed a $23 Million Series B with participation from new investors, Microsoft Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and all previously existing investors, including Intel Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, True Ventures and Visionnaire Ventures—bringing the company’s total capital raised to $36.2 Million.

“Our continued growth is a direct reflection of a capital-intensive support industry that’s ready for change. Consumers are tired of waiting for support agents to get back to them, and companies are tired of staffing expensive support teams to answer common, or even predictable, problems in the first place. People want immediate help, wherever they are, especially when using mobile applications,” said Abinash Tripathy, CEO and co-founder of Helpshift. “This is the year we champion a new model of support, one that’s better for both consumers, as well as the companies serving them.”

Since its inception in 2012, Helpshift has continually pushed the market forward, being the first to offer a fully native mobile support experience. The company has since expanded its offering, making it easy to help customers on whatever platform they happen to be on, in their exact moment of need.

Some of the customers benefiting from radically improved customer experience and agent efficiency across their teams thanks to Helpshift include: Zynga, VirginMedia, Microsoft, WesternUnion, Flipboard, Shyp, Luxe, WordPress and thousands of other industry leading brands, startups, and developers.

“Helpshift has been a great partner for Microsoft and our investment today represents our confidence in their messaging-based approach to customer service, as we hold a shared value of providing the seamless experience customers want,” said Nagraj Kashyap, corporate vice president, Microsoft Ventures.

“Businesses everywhere are moving away from email and embracing intuitive in-app support as the future. The tech industry saw this just one month back when Uber announced they had rolled out an easy to use in-app customer support model to deliver what they called ‘service at the push of a button.’ At Helpshift, we saw this years ago. We’ll continue to see many more companies make the change towards better, faster, in-app customer support.  Our new financing will help fuel our continued expansion across teams in R&D, sales and marketing.  We’re humbled by the confidence our investors, customers, and industry influencers have in us to build on this strong momentum,” continued Tripathy.