CCI okays SoftBank investment in Swiggy

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved the investment by SoftBank Vision Fund II in food delivery platform Swiggy.

Moneycontrol had reported in April that SoftBank will invest  $450-500 million in Swiggy at a post-money valuation of close to $5.5 billion.

The investment from SoftBank will come on top of the $800 million series J round that Swiggy recently closed, with Falcon Edge, Amansa, Think Investments, Carmignac and Goldman Sachs at a valuation of $5 billion. Swiggy's over $1.2 billion fund raise will give it significant firepower at a time when rival Zomato is looking to hit the public markets.

SoftBank's interest in the Indian food tech space is not new. For years, there has been speculation on whether it will go with Zomato or Swiggy Zomato seemed to have an edge a few years ago after it acquired UberEats, which gave SoftBank's portfolio company Uber, a stake in the merged entity. In fact, Alibaba's Ant Financial, which is another early bet of Masa Son is also an investor in Zomato.

​While Zomato is focused on the food delivery segment though it recently invested $100 million in grocery delivery app Grofers, Swiggy, in addition to food delivery is also  betting big on its hyperlocal delivery service Swiggy Genie, where it competes with Dunzo, Flipkart. Amazon and its online grocery service Swiggy Instamart, where it's up against players such as Flipkart, Amazon, BigBasket, JioMart, and Grofers. While its Genie service is live in over 65 cities, grocery delivery started with Gurgaon and Bengaluru.

Interestingly, Sumer Juneja, who currently leads investments for SoftBank in India used to be on the board of Swiggy a few years ago when he was with Norwest Venture Partners, one of Swiggy's early investors.

SoftBank's bet on the hyperlocal delivery space in India also comes at a time when it has seen huge success in global investments such as DoorDash. Its $680 mn investment in DoorDash was worth $11.5 billion when DoorDash went public in December last year.  The development also comes at a time when Zomato is gearing up for its over Rs 9,375 crore IPO.