Swiggy raises $210 million in latest funding

Food tech startup Swiggy on Thursday announced that it has raised $210 million in a series G funding, making it the newest entrant in the coveted unicorn club. Investors have so far pumped in $465.5 million into Swiggy.

The latest funding is led by South African media giant Naspers, and Hong-Kong based new investor DST Global. It also saw the participation of Meituan-Dianping and new investor, Coatue Management. Meituan-Dianping is China’s largest service e-commerce platform.

Months after raising $100 million in February, Swiggy said the latest funding will enable it to ramp up its supply chain network and expand to new markets, while investing in core capabilities.“The company will also double its technology headcount to build for robust operations, deep personalisation and connected supply chain system,” it added.

Swiggy was founded in August 2014 by IIM Calcutta and BITS Pilani alumnus Sriharsha Majety, his BITS-Pilani college mate Nandan Reddy, and IIT-Kharagpur graduate Rahul Jaimini. They were a part of Fortune India’s 40 under 40. Since then, Swiggy has expanded its footprint to 15 cities and partnered with 35,000 restaurants. To ramp up its game, it also acquired food startup 48East last year.

“With this investment, we will continue to widen Swiggy’s offerings, along with bolstering our capabilities and plugging the gaps in the on-demand delivery ecosystem,” said Majety, Swiggy’s CEO.

The online food delivery and ordering segment is becoming more competitive and is infused with energy after funding parched in 2015-16. Earlier this year, Ant Financials—an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group—had invested $150 million in Zomato, valuing the Indian food search and delivery service at more than $1 billion, according to media reports. With both Swiggy and Zomato joining the billion-dollar club, it will be interesting to see who captures the growing appetite of consumers for convenience food.

In 2017, the food-tech industry witnessed a growth of over 15%. The sector is expected to touch at least $2.5 billion by 2021 from its current size of about $700 million, according to a report by consultancy firm RedSeer Management.