India’s Zomato raises $62 million from Temasek

Indian food delivery startup Zomato has raised $62 million from Temasek, resuming a financing round that it originally expected to close in January this year.

Singapore’s state investment arm Temasek financed the capital through its unit MacRitchie Investments, a regulatory filing showed. Business intelligence firm Tofler shared the filing with TechCrunch.

A Zomato spokesperson in India did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Zomato kickstarted its new financing round about a year ago, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The company has met with several investors, but most talks have not materialized.

The food delivery startup, which has improved its financial performance in recent quarters despite the coronavirus outbreak, announced in January that Ant Financial had committed to provide it with $150 million.

But Ant Financial has yet to deliver two-thirds of the committed capital, Zomato investor Info Edge said in late July. In its IPO prospectus late last month, Ant Group cited a regulatory change in India as the reason for it not being able to invest in Zomato. (It’s very common for investors to finance their committed capital to a startup in several tranches.)

In April this year, India made a change to its foreign investment policy that requires Chinese investors — who have ploughed billions of dollars into Indian startups in recent years — to take approval from New Delhi before they could write new checks to Indian firms.

Reuters reported last month that Alibaba Group and its affiliates, including Ant Group, will not invest in Indian startups for at least six months.

In January, Zomato chief executive Deepinder Goyal said the company expects to close a round of up to $600 million by the end of the month. In the same month, Zomato acquired the Indian food delivery business of Uber. In early April, he told TechCrunch that he was expecting to close the round by mid-May, attributing delays to the coronavirus outbreak.

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