Zomato Attracts Bulk Deals From Kuwait, Singapore Sovereign Funds

Listed foodtech startup Zomato saw large sovereign investors from Kuwait and Singapore raising their stakes in the company at a time when the likes of unicorn makers – Tiger Global and SoftBank have made the complete exit. 

As per an ET report, Kuwait Investment Authority bought 88 Mn shares in the September quarter and later further increased its stakes by adding more 6.7 Mn shares in the December quarter. On the other hand, Singapore’s government-owned fund Temasek acquired 95 Mn shares in the startup in the December quarter. Temasek through its investment arm already had 169 Mn shares. 

Besides the sovereign funds, the country’s mutual funds have also doubled down their stakes in Zomato. As of December 2023, mutual funds owned a 12.34% stake in the company almost double of 5.72% stakes mutual funds owned in the previous year.

Interestingly, as mentioned earlier, these developments took place simultaneously when institutional investors Tiger Global and SoftBank were exiting Zomato. 

In August last year, Tiger Global exited foodtech giant Zomato by selling 12.24 Cr shares, amounting to 1.44% stake via open market transactions.

Tiger Global’s investment vehicle Internet Fund III Pte Ltd sold the shares in multiple tranches at an average price of INR 91.01 Cr, as per the bulk deal data of the BSE. In total, the venture capital investor sold the shares for INR 1,123.84 Cr.

These shares were mostly bought by French banking major Societe Generale. Apart from Societe Generale,  Kotak’s midcap fund, Axis Mutual Fund and Morgan Stanley Asia Singapore, BNP Paribas Arbitrage were the other buyers of the offloaded shares.

Tiger Global’s Internet Fund III held a 1.44% stake in Zomato at the end of June 2023. 

Just last month, Masayoshi Son-led SoftBank sold 9.35 Cr of Zomato shares in an INR 1,127 Cr block deal, thus exiting the Delhi-NCR based foodtech giant. 

SoftBank’s investment vehicle SVF Growth (Singapore) offloaded 1.06% stake in the company at INR 120.5 apiece, as per NSE data. 

These shares were bought by Invesco, ICICI Prudential Insurance, Goldman Sachs (Singapore), Kadensa Capital, Morgan Stanley Asia Singapore, among others. 

Earlier this month, Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund offloaded 4.5 Cr shares of Zomato at a price of INR 138.15 apiece in a block deal of INR 621.6 Cr. This block deal, nose dived the company’s shares by 3%. Zomato’s shares traded at INR 130.10 at the closing bell on January 20, 2023.

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