The Gurgaon-based company had announced the plan to raise fresh capital last month, at a time when the rapidly growing quick commerce industry is becoming increasingly competitive and witnessing a flush of funds being infused into the sector.
Through its plan to raise capital via QIP, which was cleared by its board on October 22, Zomato aims to strengthen its balance sheet, the company’s founder and chief executive Deepinder Goyal had said earlier.
“While the business is now generating cash (vis-a-vis a loss-making business at the time of IPO), we believe that we need to enhance our cash balance given the competitive landscape and the much larger scale of our business today,” he said last month.
The company’s chief financial officer Akshant Goyal had pointed out that while the enabling resolution to raise up to Rs 8,500 crore was passed by the board, the final size of the fundraise will depend on the market condition and timing of when the QIP is launched.
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As of September 30, Zomato had a cash balance of Rs 10,813 crore, which was lower than the Rs 12,539 crore as on June 30, on account of the company’s move to acquire Paytm’s events and ticketing business for Rs 2,048 crore.Zomato’s share closed 0.97% lower on Friday at Rs 264.15 on the BSE. The company’s shareholders also approved its plan to set up a trust to implement its employee stock ownership plan (Esop) of 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2024.
Zomato’s rivals in the food delivery and quick commerce spaces—Swiggy and Zepto—have also concluded large financing rounds recently.
While Swiggy raised Rs 4,499 crore through the fresh issue portion of its initial public offering that closed earlier this month, domestic investors pumped $350 million in 10-minute grocery delivery startup Zepto, ET reported on November 22.
Excluding the latest round, Zepto has already raised $1 billion over the last four to five months.
Profitable since the first quarter of fiscal 2024, Zomato reported a 68% year-on-year increase in its operating revenue for the July-September quarter this year at Rs 4,799 crore. It reported a five-fold jump in its net profit for the quarter at Rs 176 crore.
ET had reported on October 19 that with all of the players in the quick commerce space having a large war chest full of cash, the already fired-up sector could see an escalation of cash burn, leading to an impact on the companies’ unit economics.
Zomato-owned Blinkit is in the midst of a massive expansion exercise planning to have 1,000 dark stores, or micro warehouses from where 10-minute deliveries are made, by end of the ongoing fiscal, and 2,000 such stores by end of 2026.
Meanwhile, Zepto is also planning to operate over 700 dark stores by the end of FY25, while Swiggy Instamart aims for its dark store count to grow to 741 from around 557 as of June 30.
