Online travel agency Ctrip has entered discussions to invest $100m in India-based online food listings and delivery platform Zomato as part of a round that could reach $400m, Times of India reported yesterday.
The round is set to include Ant Financial, the financial services affiliate of e-commerce group Alibaba, and will value Zomato at between $1.8bn and $2bn, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Zomato has built an online platform that lists local restaurants in 10,000 cities across 24 countries and allows users to reserve tables or order food directly from them for delivery. It also offers management and customer engagement tools for partner restaurants.
News of Ctrip’s interest comes days after Zomato revealed it had acquired TongueStun, a provider of cafeteria services for corporate customers.
Ant Financial is already an investor in Zomato, having provided $150m of equity funding for the company in March this year, in a deal that took its total equity funding to about $375m, while buying another $50m of shares through a secondary transaction.
The corporate holds a 20% to 22% stake and the Economic Times reported today that it has secured regulatory approval to become Zomato’s largest shareholder.
Classified listings operator Info Edge owns about 31% of the company, according to ET. It has been a Zomato backer since the latter’s seed round, and owned a 50.1% stake following a 2015 series F round in which it supplied $24.8m of the $50m raised.
Zomato’s other investors include Singaporean government-owned firm Temasek and investment firm Vy Capital, which co-led a $60m round closed later in 2015 that valued the company at $900m, as well as venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.