Naspers leads $100 mn round in food delivery startup Swiggy

Online food delivery startup Swiggy.com, run by Bengaluru-based Bundl Technologies Pvt. Ltd, has raised $100 million (Rs 640 crore) in its largest round of funding till date.

The Series F round was led by existing investor South African Internet and entertainment group Naspers, Swiggy said in a statement on Thursday. The round included a new investor, Chinese e-commerce service platform Meituan-Dianping.

Swiggy said it will use the funds to introduce “advanced products and services”, without specifying what those could be. The company will also continue to innovate its core technology platform, especially in the areas of data-driven self-learning systems that leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence, it said.

“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,” Sriharsha Majety, co-founder and chief executive of Swiggy, said in the statement.

Larry Illg, CEO at Naspers Ventures, said Swiggy has continued strong growth through 2017 and now has “a clear lead” in the market. “The company’s performance is all the more impressive given the intense competition we see in the food ordering and delivery business in India.”

The Series F round takes Swiggy’s total external funding, so far, to $255 million. Its other investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel India, SAIF Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.

Swiggy had last raised funding in May 2017, when Naspers led an $80 million Series E round.

Previously, Swiggy had secured $15 million in its Series D funding round in September 2016 and $35 million in its Series C round in January 2016.

The startup was founded in August 2014 by Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jaimini. Majety and Reddy are BITS-Pilani alumni while Jaimini is an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus.

In September last year, Swiggy appointed former Britannia Industries executive Rahul Bothra as its first chief financial officer.

Swiggy competes with the likes of Foodpanda, Zomato and FreshMenu.

Swiggy clocked revenue of Rs 133 crore for the financial year ended March 2017, up from Rs 20 crore in the previous year, as per the company’s filings with the Registrar of Companies. Net loss, however, widened to Rs 205 crore from Rs 137 crore. Total expenditure, too, surged to Rs 345 crore from Rs 157 crore in the previous year.