Online restaurant discovery and food delivery company Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd has invested an undisclosed amount in Hyderabad-based food delivery startup TinMen.
Owned and operated by Vicinia Retail Pvt. Ltd, TinMen is a home-cooked meal delivery app that currently serves across 10 major areas in Hyderabad.
“Zomato and Tinmen will work together, initially in Hyderabad and then across India, to provide access to better food for more people. Through Tinmen’s unique operating model, it generates a steady stream of revenue for its home-chefs, creating earning opportunities for people who love to cook great food,†Zomato co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said in a blog post.
TinMen is a daily food delivery service targeted at office-goers. Users can create meal plans for a day, week or month, and can opt out at a day’s notice. The company does not own kitchens, but has home chefs on its platform. It has tied up with third-party logistics service providers and runs its own delivery service.
The company currently delivers 30,000 meals every month, sourced from over 100 home chefs . Its services are currently available across Madhapur, Hitec City, Kondapur, Gachibowli, Jubilee Hills, Banjara Hills, Begumpet, Miyapur, Manikonda and Kukatpally.
The startup was founded in August 2015 by Chaitanya Degala and Mukesh Manda. Degala is an alumnus of Oxford Said Business School and has had stints in CRISIL and Deloitte before starting up. Manda is an IIT-Kharagpur graduate who had previously worked with Oracle and Amazon.
In April, TinMen had raised an undisclosed amount from MAPE Advisory Group, Sify co-founder R Ramaraj and Corvus Ventures, which is led by Mahesh Reddy of MAPE Advisory. Existing investor Lead Angels, which had put in an undisclosed amount in the company last year, had also participated in the round.
Zomato had recently acquired Bengaluru-based on-demand logistics and food delivery startup Runnr.
In the delivery space, Zomato has been upping its game against Naspers-backed rival and market leader Swiggy. It had announced that it will forgo commissions charged to restaurants clocking high order volumes.
“Our core advertising business in India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East – the three key regions for us – is generating enough cash to cover for the millions of dollars of investments we are making into the rest of the regions for our new businesses, such as online food ordering, table reservations, Zomato Gold and Zomato Base,†the company had said in a blog post recently.
Zomato had also claimed that it was profitable. “Throughout the 24 countries where we operate, and across all our businesses, we are starting to make money.†It, however, did not specify further details.
The company had reduced its cash burn by 81% to $12 million in 2016-17 from $64 million in the year-ago period, while its revenue surged about 80% to $49 million. Revenue from the food ordering business jumped eight-fold to almost $9 million.
