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.

Ola acquires Foodpanda India Unit

Ola, operated by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd, has acquired food delivery start-up Foodpanda India from its German Parent Delivery Hero AG in an all-stock deal that will see the ride hailing major infuse $200 Million in Foodpanda India operations. Under the deal, Foodpanda’s India business will be transferred to Ola in exchange for the latter’s stock.

The deal marks Ola’s foray into the online food ordering and delivery segment, a business shaped in India by the likes of Zomato and Swiggy, and one where Ola’s biggest rival, Uber, has been making strides recently through its unit UberEATS. Ola too tested what it called Ola Cafe in 2014, but shut down the unit shortly after. The collaboration between Ola and Foodpanda India unlocks the power of a partnership that will help Foodpanda India grow as the most preferred online food delivery service in the country.

The deal comes months after Bengaluru-based Ola raised a huge $1.1 billion (another $1 billion is likely to come in soon) from SoftBank Group and Tencent Holdings to strengthen its position in India. Mobility start-ups with terabytes of data on local routes and consumer app usage patterns are generally believed to be better placed in running a delivery business. In 2014, San Francisco-based Uber launched UberEATS as a pilot project and has since taken the service to 27 countries—and seven Indian cities in quick succession since May this year.

Foodpanda India was set up as the local unit of Berlin-based Foodpanda GmbH, a Rocket Internet portfolio firm, in 2012. The company has had a tough stint in India, given service quality issues, layoffs and ceding of market share to rivals. Last year, Delivery Hero acquired Foodpanda GmbH but the deal did not have a substantial trickle-down impact on India operations.

Flipkart acquires eBay India

India’s largest online retailer Flipkart has closed a mammoth funding round of $1.4 Billion from Tencent Holding Ltd, eBay Inc., and Microsoft Corp., in the biggest ever start-up funding round that both boosts Flipkart ability to compete with arch-rival Amazon India and takes the company a step closer to presenting itself as the only option to the US firm’s Indian arm.

Flipkart Ltd will also buy eBay’s India business as part of the $1.4 Billion deal. The funding round values Flipkart at $11.6 Billion, which is lower than its peak valuation of $15 billion but still higher than the valuation it was assigned by some of its own investors last year. Flipkart may get additional capital soon as it is in talks to buy smaller rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd). 

The deal valued eBay’s India unit at $200-$250 million. eBay India will continue to operate its platform as a unit of Flipkart; it becomes the latest acquisition for Flipkart, which has bought the fashion retailers Myntra and Jabong as well as mobile payments app PhonePe in the past three years. The Bengaluru-based online retailer fetched a pre-money valuation of $10.2 billion in the latest round. Pre-money refers to the value of the company excluding the round’s capital infusion.

 Before this round, Flipkart had last raised funds in June 2015 when existing investors led by Tiger Global Management pumped $700 million into the company, valuing it at $15 billion. Since starting out in 2007, Flipkart has raised nearly $5 billion in capital, accounting for more than 45% of funds raised by all 10 Indian unicorns, which include Snapdeal, Paytm, Ola and Quikr. Amazon has committed $5 billion toward its Indian operations, of which it has already spent more than $2 billion.