Zomato To Hike Stake In Blinkit
In an effort to step up its game as competition in the quick-delivery industry heats up, food delivery company Zomato Ltd. is scheduled to acquire local grocery delivery startup Blinkit for 44.47 billion rupees ($568.16 million) in an all-stock deal.
Rivals Swiggy, Dunzo, BigBasket, Zepto, and Reliance Industries-backed Dunzo are also betting on quick deliveries in the so-called quick commerce sector, which had a market value of $300 million last year and is anticipated to increase by 10-15 times to $5 billion by 2025, according to research firm RedSeer.
Zomato announced earlier this year that it would invest up to $400 million in the Indian rapid commerce industry over the next two years. In August, Zomato paid approximately 5.18 billion rupees ($66.16 million) to acquire a stake of more than 9% in Blinkit.
According to Zomato’s letter to shareholders on Friday, Blinkit’s gross order value for May was 4.03 billion rupees.
The SoftBank Group-backed company Blinkit, formerly known as Grofers, changed its name in the latter part of last year as its CEO pledged to speed up deliveries of everything from groceries to electronics in a developing market dominated by Walmart’s Flipkart and Amazon’s local unit.
Blinkit delivers anything from milk, fruits, and veggies, to electronics in more than 20 Indian cities. China’s Ant Group, which supports Zomato, withdrew specifics regarding the size of the most recent stake.
However, the firm said its average monthly transacting clients reached an all-time high of 15.7 million in the fourth quarter, up from 15.3 million in the prior quarter, even though the company reported a larger loss for the March quarter compared to a year earlier.
Additionally, it stated that it would pay up to 607 million rupees for Grofers International, the parent company of Blinkit, to sell its storage and auxiliary services division.
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