Zomato secures $5 million fund from Baillie Gifford


Zomato secures $5 million fund from Baillie Gifford

Restaurant aggregator and food delivery concern Zomato scooped off a fund of $5 million (Rs 38.20 crore) from a fund manage by the British investment manager Baillie Gifford, Pacific Horizon.

As per the recent analyses done by Zomato with the Registrar of Companies, and accessed by business intelligence platform Tofler, this online food delivery and restaurant recommendation platform has allotted 1,177 Series J2 Compulsorily Convertible Cumulative Preference Shares (CCCPS) at $4,245.56 respectively, for a total deliberation of about $4.99 million, to Pacific Horizon Investment Trust.

Based in Edinburgh, Baillie Gifford the fund management firm, had earlier invested in Flipkart, which is India’s largest online retailer. It has also backedIndia’s leading ride sharing firm, Ola.

The firm manages close to $290 billion across multiple assets classes, including, specialist equity, fixed income and multi-asset portfolios for its global client base. As of end-February, its emerging markets growth fund had allocated a shade over 13 per cent of its total assets to India.

The latest capital infusion comes a little over three months after Zomato acquired Uber’s food delivery business in India in $206 million all-stock deal, a transaction that also saw the San Francisco-based ride-hailing giant pick up 9.9 per cent stake in the former.

At the current situation, Zomatohas seen food delivery orders plunge by about 70 per cent in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has imposed a nationwide lockdown on Asia’s third-largest economy. Hence, the business has also faced other challenges, including winning back customer, establishing trust about food hygiene and bringing more restaurants on to their platforms.