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Gurgaon-based online restaurant guide, Zomato, is in advanced discussions to raise a new round of funding worth somewhere between $60 Mn to 80 Mn to be led by Singapore’s private equity firm Temasek Holdings. Its existing investors are also likely to participate in this round, according to TOI.
The funding will be utilised to establish a strong presence against Yelp, which is Zomato’s biggest competitor in the US. The company is also looking to expand in economies like Europe, South East Asia and Latin America.
Apart from that, the funding will also be used in entering segments like online food delivery and cashless payments in India to take on the likes of Rocket Internet backed FoodPanda and Mumbai-based TinyOwl.
Since last year, Zomato is aggressively raising funds for its expansion and acquisition plans. It raised $60 Mn from Vy Capital, Info Edge and Sequoia Capital last year and about $50 Mn from Info Edge and few other investors in April this year. During the last fundraise, Zomato was said to be valued at over $1 Bn.
In past one year, Zomato has acquired 7 startups across the globe including US-based Urbanspoon, a restaurant information and recommendation service for $52 Mn to enter the US and Australian markets. Followed by other startups like Turkey’s popular restaurant research service firm Mekanist; Italy-based web and mobile restaurant search services startup Cibando Ltd; MenuMania in New Zealand; Lunchtime in the Czech Republic; Obedovat in Slovakia; and Gastronauci in Poland.
Founded in 2008 by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, Zomato currently operates in 20 countries including India, Dubai, UK, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Poland and New Zealand.
In the food tech space, these has been a lot of action. In February this year, FoodPanda acquired JustEat India operations and had acquired TastyKhana last year in November.
Another Mumbai-based startup TinyOwl raised about $15 Mn (INR 100 Cr.) in Series B funding round from from Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture Partners. Prior to that, it had raised $3 Mn from Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture Partners in December, 2014.
While few other food tech startups that managed to raise funding, such as Pune-based tech focused QSR chain Faaso, which raised $20 Mn from LightBox Ventures and Sequoia Capital, while Yumist, FRSH and Holachef altogether got funding of $1 Mn, $250k – $200k and INR 2 Cr. respectively.
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