Coca-Cola Picks Up 15% Stake In Zomato, Swiggy Rival Thrive

The Coca-Cola Company has acquired a 15% stake in the Indian foodtech platform Thrive, marking the beverage maker’s first investment in an Indian startup.

Thrive partners with restaurants and allows them to receive orders online and incorporate tech-enabled features such as a digital menu, WhatsApp ordering, menu management and order management. It also includes a tool for restaurants to manage dine-in orders. On the front end, it is a food discovery and delivery platform.

Krishi Fagwani, co-founder and CEO of Thrive, said in a statement, “We found excellent synergies with Coca-Cola India’s leadership team in our outlook on the market and how we can work towards bringing a change. Our purpose is to make food commerce better for every stakeholder involved, and we’re excited to witness and collaborate with Coca-Cola India to work towards bringing a positive disruption in the food-tech space.”

This would further help Thrive offer customers the option to customise their orders and Thrive and Coca-Cola to sell package deals and meal combinations, along with loyalty codes for customer acquisition and retention. “This presents a great opportunity for both Thrive and Coca-Cola given the online food delivery market’s projected rapid growth and contribution to the total food services industry,” said Karan Chechani, cofounder and CMO of Thrive in a blog post.

Founded in 2020 by Fagwani, Dhruv Dewan and Karan Chechani, the startup is said to have partnered with more than 14,000 restaurants in 80 cities and competes directly with Swiggy and Zomato. Thrive allows restaurants to either use their staff to deliver the orders or one of the startup’s third-party logistics partners.

Thrive also has a self-serve tool that offers restaurants the option of building their sub-portals on its platform so they can get direct online orders from consumers. The platform has gained a large restaurant base as it claims to charge only 3% commission, compared to 18-25% being charged by Zomato and Swiggy.

The Coca-Cola investment will not be the first time when Thrive will receive investment from a major food player. In 2021, Jubilant FoodWorks, which operates Domino’s India, picked up a 35% stake in Thrive for around INR 25 Cr. The Coca-Cola deal has taken down Jubliant’s shareholding in Thrive from 35% to 29.75% on a fully diluted basis.

Both Coca-Cola and its arch-rival PepsiCo have been having a turf war in India in terms of partnerships with major food brands to pair their products.

For instance, while local food brands such as Burger Singh, Biryani By Kilo and Wow! Momo have partnered with Pepsi, several international brands such as McDonald’s and Wendy’s have partnered with Coca-Cola.

According to a Statista report, the Indian online food delivery segment is projected to reach a revenue of $20.27 Bn by 2027. However, the market is basically a duopoly as Zomato and Swiggy account for an overwhelming majority. 

An HSBC report showed that Zomato’s market share stood at 55% for the January-June 2022 period, with the rest being held by Swiggy. For the December 2022 quarter, the share mix changed to 54% for Zomato and 46% for Swiggy, respectively.

However, both companies are loss-making, with Zomato reporting a loss of INR 346.6 Cr in Q3 FY23 and Swiggy posting a loss of INR 3,629 Cr in FY22.