Online restaurant discovery and food delivery startup Zomato has today announced that it has closed the acquisition of food delivery startup Runnr in an all-stock deal.
Earlier, there were reports making rounds that Zomato, as well as UberEATS, were in talks with Runnr for a potential acquisition. As it turns out, Zomato is the one that made a better offer.
Commenting on this acquisition, Zomato’s co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said in a blog post:
With the combination of Zomato and Runnr, we have everything in the stack of building a delightful food delivery service – end to end – listings, discovery, reviews, ordering, and now, logistics.
While the company has not revealed financial details related to the deal, people aware of the matter suggests that the deal values Runnr at around ₹255 crore ($40 million).
The food-tech startup’s co-founder and CEO Mohit Kumar and the rest of the founding team will continue to run the business. As a part of this acquisition, Runnr’s workforce of around 1,500 people will now join Zomato. However, the brand will continue to function separately as an independent entity.
Runnr currently fulfils about 300,000 orders for Zomato on monthly basis, which is roughly less than 10 percent of its total delivery volumes. Zomato currently fulfils delivery for over 3 million orders monthly.
Interestingly, even after the acquisition, there will be no restriction on Runnr’s functioning as a logistics company and will be allowed to continue deliveries within the food sector for other players.
Runnr was formed after on-demand logistics startup Roadrunnr acquired struggling food-ordering startup TinyOwl in June last year. The deal was arranged by the common investors of the two startups. The merged entity then rebranded and pivoted to food delivery business.
Zomato, which is currently operating in around 26 countries, is said to be in advanced talks with Alibaba and its payments arm Ant Financial to raise around ₹12,800 ($200 million) in a new funding round.