Zomato to invest 1 billion USD in startups

Food delivery and restaurant aggregation platform Zomato is planning are to invest 1 billion USD over the next two years according to the company’s founder and chief executive Deepinder Goyal.  Zomato has already invested 275 million USD in the past six months over four companies, including USD 100 million investment in Grofers, a grocery delivery service. As told by Mr. Goyal in their company’s blog, the company plans on deploying 1 billion USD out of which a large chunk is likely to be spent on commerce space. Zomato has agreed to spend USD 75 million to get an 8% stake in Bigfoot Retail Solutions Pvt. Ltd. which runs business-to-business logistics technology player Shiprocket.

Samast Technologies Pvt. Ltd., which runs a hyperlocal discovery platform Magicpin will get an investment of USD 50 million from Zomato. Meanwhile, Zomato has shuttered its nutraceutical and grocery verticals to focus on its core food delivery business. The company said that they will their subsidiary Lebannon which is their only remaining international business. The company also has dining-out operations in UAE. As per the founder, the company believes that the food delivery market in India is still in the nascent stage and has the potential to grow over ten times in the next few years and that is why they are investing in ecosystem companies around their food delivery business so that cost of running the business goes down with time.