Zomato acquires Runnr to boost food delivery biz

To fuel its ambitious growth plan, food technology startup Zomato on Wednesday acquired hyper-local delivery startup Runnr.

Accordingecommerce analyst, the acquisition will further enhance Zomato’s capability further penetrate in the delivery business where it is facing stiff competition from Naspers-backed Swiggy.

Zomato is a restaurant search and discovery service owned by Gurgaon-based Zomato Media Pvt Ltd and founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008. It currently operates in 23 countries, including India, Australia, and the US. Announcing the acquisition in the company blogpost, Zomato co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said the acquisition will add Runnr team of 1500 strong members.

“Yes, that’s right, we just signed our long-rumoured acquisition of Runnr. Emotionally, the deal has been in place for a couple of months now, and both the teams have been working closely with each other quite some time now. So much so, Mohit Kumar, the Founder & CEO of Runnr, has been living in Delhi (moving from Bangalore) for about two months already,” , said Goyal.

Runnr, operated by Carthero Technologies Pvt. Ltd was founded in 2015 as a B2B on-demand logistics startup in Bengaluru by ex-Flipkart employees Mohit Kumar and Arpit Dave. Runner acquired troubled food-ordering startup TinyOwl in a share-swap transaction in 2016 June and transformed into a food delivery company.

Zomato founder also said that Runnr will continue to function as an independent logistics company and offer logistics services to other companies, including pharmaceutical, grocery and e-commerce clients. “This will ensure that the delivery fleet capacity that we build operates on a positive unit economics level while serving the mega-peaks in the food delivery business,” Goyal said.

“With the combination of Zomato and Runnr, we have everything in the stack of building a delightful food delivery service in India and UAE - end to end - listings, discovery, reviews, ordering, and now, logistics,” he added.

While Roadrunner raised $20-25 million from the likes of Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures, Zomato raised a total funding to $$225 million from a set of four investors like Info Edge, Sequoia India, Vy Capital, and Temasek Holdings.