Zomato’s much storied UberEats India acquisition, finally has an official value pegged to it. According to certain regulatory filings within one of its overseas markets, Uber has disclosed that the deal was closed for $206 Million (via TechCrunch), for a 9.99% stake in Zomato. Earlier, at the time of this acquisition, the deal was speculated to be worth $350 Million. Clearly, that wasn’t the case.
Rest of the deal remains the same. Zomato will take over the UberEats’ customers, restaurant partners and driver partners, with the latter ceasing to exist as an independent brand within India. As soon as the deal was made official, all users within the UberEats India app were being automatically redirected to the Zomato App.
According to Uber’s announcement in January, the UberEats India business was sold to Zomato for a 9.99% stake in the loss-making Indian food delivery startup. The financial terms of the deal however, were not disclosed, only coming to light with those regulatory filings now. Uber has further declared in the filing, that the “fair value of the consideration” it received for Uber Eats’ India business from Zomato was $206 million, which included $35 million of “reimbursement of goods and services tax receivable from Zomato.
With these financial revelations, it seems Zomato may have taken a significant hit on its valuation, considering it raised $150M at a $3B valuation from Alibaba’s Ant Financials fairly recently. For Uber, this is a sweet deal. According to Financial Times, the operations of the food delivery service in India only constituted 3% of its global revenue and close to 25% of company’s losses last year.
The UberEats India-Zomato deal essentially created a duopoly in the Indian food delivery space, with Swiggy and Zomato the only two large players. However, things changed when a sudden news of Amazon looking to enter the space. There have also been reports that Amazon could tie up with Indian business tycoon and billionaire Narayan Murthy for the same. He was invited by Bezos for a chat during his brief India visit earlier this year.
