Meituan-Dianping, China’s largest o2o lifestyle service, has participated in a USD 100 million Series F round in India’s food delivery firm Swiggy. The round is led by South African media giant Naspers and is Swiggy’s largest funding round to date since its inception in 2014, piling up the Bangalore-based company’s total funding to as much as USD255 million.
“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 to India’s Economic Times.
Meituan-Dianping, the world’s #4 most valuable startup, is backed by Tencent. The company has a strong foothold in Chinese food delivery sector. According to WANG Puzhong, the company’s senior VP, Meituan Food reports RMB 171 billion (approx. USD 27 billion) in transactions in 2017, almost triple the number from a year earlier. The company holds as much as 60% of the whole food delivery market in China.
Meituan Food claims to have 250 million users and partners with over 2 million restaurants and shops. The company’s 500k+ delivery man handle 18 million orders on a daily basis, covering more than 1300 cities across the country.
Meituan’s funding in Swiggy is slated to bring more competition to a rapid growing India online food delivery market. According to RedSeer, an Indian consultancy, local food delivery market is expected to grow at a whopping 90% compound annualized growth rate to become a US$ 4b market in 2020.
Last week, Alibaba’s Ant Financial has just pumped in $200 million into Zomato, a direct competitor to Swiggy. Zomato handles about 100k orders every day while Swiggy handles over 140k.
