Swiggy wants more on its plate, in talks to acquire Ubereats India
Feb 22, 2019, 14:32 IST
- According to reports, the deal is in its final stages of negotiations.
- The deal would give Swiggy a bigger hand to take on rival Zomato.
- Swiggy had earlier announced that it is going to start grocery and medicine delivery too.
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Swiggy had a great 2018, grabbing the unicorn status. And now Swiggy wants a bigger share of the plate as it is in talks with Uber to take over the operations of Ubereats India. According to a report on the Economic Times, the deal is in its final stages of negotiation and is expected to close by next month.
The report further mentions that the deal could be a share swap, where Swiggy in exchange for taking over Ubereats will give the ride hailing company Uber a 10% stake.
Earlier reports also suggested that Zomato and Swiggy both were looking at acquiring Ubereats India operations. Both the companies together hold 80% of the online food delivery space in India.
With Swiggy reportedly leading the race for acquisition now, the deal would give the company a better stand to take on rival Zomato.
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Swiggy became one of India’s fastest unicorn in June last year, getting the prime status in just four years of operations. In December 2018, the food delivery startup further raked up a whopping $1 billion in funding, taking up its valuation to $3.3 billion. “With this funding, we will further invest in building differentiated offerings, plugging the white spaces in the ecosystem, and developing our technology while keeping superlative customer experience at the core," said Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy had then said.
The startup is also expanding its offering, as it announced earlier in February, that it will soon start delivery of groceries, medicines and more.
It has also been on an acquisition spree – it acquired on demand delivery platform Scootsy to leverage the Scootsy’s existent network of restaurants and grow its consumer base. It had also acqui-hired the gourmet Asian food startup 48east.
On the technology side, Swiggy had also taken over Bengaluru-based AI startup Kint.io. “This acqui-hire is part of Swiggy's strategy to scale our tech prowess by bringing in entrepreneurial teams that can solve unique customer problems,” said Dale Vaz, Head of Engineering and Data Sciences, Swiggy had told ETtech.
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