Keeping up with the race, Ola is investing Rs 400 crore in its newly acquired food delivery arm Foodpanda India. The development was first reported by The Economic Times. In a statement shared with MediaNama, company said that it will use the capital to further strengthening its delivery network, and will hire 25K riders throughout the country in the next 12 to 15 months.
Besides, the company with scale up its technology, and its logistics network. Pranay Jivrajka, CEO, Foodpanda India said that “a strong delivery ecosystem backed by technology is one of the most fundamental needs of the Indian food tech industry. We at Foodpanda recognise this and are investing INR 400 crores to further strengthen our delivery network across all the metros and other key cities.”
Neck-to-Neck race
Note that the development comes after a week when online food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy raised Series F funding of US $100 million, and Zomato raised $150 million from Alibaba’s Ant Financial.
Ola had bought Foodpanda India from its Germany-based parent Delivery Hero Group in December, 2017. Once a prominent player in food delivery business, Foodpanda India lost its ground to players like Swiggy and Zomato. It reported revenues of Rs 62.16 crore for the financial year 2016-2017 (FY 16-17) an increase of 64% from Rs 37.81 crore. Meanwhile, Foodpanda India said that it is working to reduce its losses. For FY16-17, registered a loss of Rs 44.81 crore compared to Rs 142.64 crore in the same year last year.
The food delivery space in India is getting steamier with players betting on the sector in a big way.
Along with competing with food delivery players like Zomato and Swiggy, the cab aggregator Ola also takes on its global rival Uber’s UberEATs, which was launched in India with Mumbai in June 2017, and then later expanded to Gurgaon, Bangalore, Chennai, Chandigarh, Delhi, and Hyderabad.
Update: We have updated the post after we heard back from the company.
