Gurgaon-based Zomato Media Pvt Ltd, which owns the popular restaurant and event-listing site Zomato.com, has raised a fresh round of funding worth Rs 370 crore ($60 million) led jointly by Info Edge (India) Limited and Vy Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital, it said on Wednesday.
The transaction also includes purchase of shares from certain existing shareholders. The names of sellers and how much went to them are not disclosed.
This is its Series E investment at a pre-money valuation of Rs 3,700 crore ($600 million) which translates into post-money valuation of $660 million.
Info Edge said it would be picking equity shares and convertible preference shares of Zomato and has retained its 50.1 per cent holding in the company with the latest funding.
"Our first investment in Zomato was made almost four years ago, and the team has shown phenomenal progress since then to build the Zomato that we know and use. The company is growing very fast, and we are proud to back them up to further grow the business – both inside and outside of India," said Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder of Info Edge.
This takes Zomato’s total funding to over $113 million. Zomato had earlier raised $53 million from Info Edge (India) Limited and Sequoia Capital over multiple rounds of funding.
Info Edge itself has put in around Rs 327 crore in Zomato to date, which is currently valued at Rs 1,850 crore.
The fresh funds will be used to accelerate the company's global expansion and new product development, Zomato said in a statement.
"Zomato is well on its way to becoming the world's local expert in dining out. In the past year, we have added eight countries and millions of new users to our foodie truck. From just restaurant discovery and menus, Zomato has now become a vast global community driven by social interactions," said Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO of Zomato.
In the new investment, it has added Vy Capital as a new investor besides scooping up more from existing investors Info Edge and Sequoia.
"Zomato is one of the first Internet companies out of India with a consumer product that is scaling on a global basis and a team that is executing extremely well. We look forward to being long-term partners of the company as it establishes itself among the global Internet leaders," said Alexander Tamas, founding partner of Vy Capital.
This is the debut investment for the Silicon Valley based Vy Capital in India and the fifth addition to its portfolio since July this year. It has also backed ventures like China's mobile shopping software maker Koudai, Spanish e-voting solutions firm Scytl, Chinese image sharing app Nice and US-based water protection solutions firm HZO.
Zomato was founded in 2008 by IIT Delhi alumni and ex-Bain employees Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. An online and mobile restaurant discovery service, Zomato provides information such as menus, directions, contact details, pictures and user reviews for over 300,000 restaurants. The firm is present in over 100 cities across 18 countries, including India, the UK, the Czech Republic, the UAE, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Qatar.
The company currently employs 900 people.
IT has been actively expanding overseas both organically and through M&As. Zomato has acquired four companies in the recent past. These acquisitions include MenuMania in New Zealand, Lunchtime in the Czech Republic, Obedovat in Slovakia, and Gastronauci in Poland.
Over the next year, it plans to expand to 14 more countries across Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia and the Americas.
The company claims to have over 30 million visits across its web and mobile platforms every month and says over half of Zomato’s traffic comes from mobile apps.
Zomato's operating revenues for the year ended March 31, 2014, almost tripled to Rs 30.6 crore over the previous year. Its operating EBITDA loss, however, widened to Rs 41.28 crore from Rs 10.03 crore in the same period.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
