Swiggy acquires AI start-up Kint.io

Online food delivery start-up Swiggy has made its first acqui-hire in the deep technology space through an AI start-up Kint.io for an undisclosed amount. As part of this, the founding team of Kint.io will join Swiggy.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company, which is also foraying into the hyperlocal delivery space, will join Swiggy to boost its computer vision technology and elevate consumer experience. The acqui-hire development comes just a few months after the company closed its mammoth funding round of $1 billion, which was led by Naspers and saw participation from China’s Tencent Holdings.

The round saw Swiggy’s valuation shoot up to $3.3 billion. The company had been on the lookout to close a few acquisitions following the funding round. Founded in 2014, Kint.io applies deep learning and computer vision to object recognition in video. Prior to this, Swiggy had made an acquisition in the food-delivery space through a buyout of on-demand delivery start-up Scootsy in August

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As consumer internet companies in India are growing and raising money, importance is being given to building a more robust technology stack for an enhanced experience. In August, Flipkart acquired AI-led speech recognition start-up Liv.ai as they looked at elevating consumer experience of the next 200 million shoppers. Following this, the Walmart-backed company also acquired Upstream, an analytics company from Israel, in a bid to deliver real-time pricing and product analytics to the platform’s sellers.

Swiggy acquires Scootsy

Food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy has acquired Scootsy, an intracity delivery service provider in an all-cash deal. Scootsy provides delivery service for restaurants, toys & beauty products and electronics items among others.

Scootsy is a well-loved brand that enjoys loyalty from both its restaurant partners and the consumer. With a shared belief of providing a superior user experience, its addition will extend the convenience and reliability that Swiggy is synonymous. Swiggy will strengthen Scootsy curated restaurant network and help the brand expand to newer cities using Swiggy operational strength. Scootsy will continue to operate as an independent app post the acquisition.

For Swiggy, the acquisition of Mumbai-based Scootsy is in line with its vision to provide a superior consumer experience and the widest restaurant choices for consumers. It will extend the breadth and selection of Swiggy existing network of 40,000 restaurants by adding more curated restaurants to it. Scootsy was founded in 2015. Last year, it raised $3.6 million from Agnus Capital and Khattar Holdings.

The acquisition will enable Scootsy expansion across Mumbai and also support its foray into four to five major Indian cities in the coming months. Swiggy, which started in August 2014, is one of the fastest Indian start-ups to reach a valuation of $1 billion. In June, Swiggy announced that it has raised $210 million from a group of investors, led by Naspers and billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global. The fund raise valued Swiggy at about $1.3 billion.