Exclusive | Swiggy acquires on-demand delivery startup Scootsy

Bengaluru based Foodtech unicorn Swiggy lays off 1,100 employees as the demand slows amid ongoing coronavirus outbreak. (Image: Moneycontrol)

Food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy has acquired Mumbai-based on-demand delivery startup Scootsy for a valuation of $8-10 million, according to two sources privy to the development.

It is a mix of cash and stock deal under which the founding team is likely to join Swiggy, sources told Moneycontrol.

Scootsy was incubated by Ant Farm and was launched in 2015. It last raised $3.6 million in a bridge round from investment firm Khattar Holdings and Agnus Capital, the family office of promoters of Stride Group in April 2017.

The company, which primarily runs operations in South Mumbai, had partnered with around 50 brands including names such as Hamley's, Nicobar, The Table, The Bombay Canteen, Bastian and Kitchen Garden.

While it started off to deliver a broad selection of goods specially in the gifts and daily essentials categories, off late its majority of the business came from delivering food which is a capital guzzling segment with cash rich competitors such as Swiggy, Zomato and Uber Eats.

According to one of the sources quoted above, it is learnt to be a distress deal given the sheer cash burn involved food delivery segment. The company is learnt to have been doing around 1,600 orders on a daily basis. This is against around 3.5-4 lakh orders delivered by Swiggy per day.

Scootsy started its operations in 2015 with Rishi Khiani and Sandeep Das as its co-founders. Both Das and Khiani are former Network 18 employees. While Das headed business operations in the directories division and digital and local search arm Infomedia18, Khiani was the chief operating officer of Web18.

Swiggy, which recently did two back-to-back funding rounds, is again in talks with Japan-based SoftBank for a fresh round of funding. The company last raised  $210 million in a round led by existing investor Naspers and new investor DST Global.  This round happened barely three months after it raised $100 million from Naspers and Meituan-Dianping.

In December, Swiggy also acquired 48East, a Bengaluru-based Asian food ordering startup.

Swiggy and Scootsy did not immediately respond to queries sent by Moneycontrol.