DST Global to invest in Swiggy in its third round of funding this year.
This will be the third round of financing in the past one year for Swiggy, which has already raised about $256 million to date. Swiggy was last valued at $700 million after its $100-million funding in February. Swiggy has received interest from four to five investors and this will be its largest round of funding. In March this year, New York based technology hedge fund Coatue Management was expressing interest in investing $50 million-$100 million.
The new round of funding will give the four-year-old start-up significant ammunition to maintain its lead over Gurgaon-based rival Zomato, which last raised $150 million from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s payment affiliate Ant Financial in February.
Swiggy leads the country’s online food-delivery business, handling over 7 million orders every month from around 35,000 restaurants listed on its platform in India. Last month, rival company Zomato claimed that it crossed the 5.5-million order mark across both India and the UAE markets.
This investment would mark DST Global’s return to the Indian internet ecosystem after a three-year gap when it last invested in Ola in 2015. This will be the first bet in the Indian food technology sector for DST Global, which has in the past invested in global firms operating in the space, such as the UK-based Deliveroo and China’s Meituan Dianping.
The Chinese online-to-offline service platform is a stakeholder in Swiggy, having invested about Rs 256 crore (about $40 million) as part of Swiggy’s $100 million fund-raise in February.
The rush to invest in Swiggy comes at a time when ride-hailing players Ola and Uber have also expanded into the space, making food delivery the hottest battle in India’s digital economy right now.
DST Global (DST) was founded by Yuri Milner in 2009 for the purpose of making minority investments in the most significant and fast-growing internet companies. It is based in California.