Zomato completes acquisition of quick commerce company Blinkit

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal

Zomato has completed the acquisition of quick commerce company Blinkit (formerly Grofers) and its warehousing and ancillary services business, the food delivery major said in a filing on August 11.

"The Company has completed acquisition of 100% shareholding of BCPL from its shareholders. Accordingly, BCPL became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company with immediate effect i.e. from August 10, 2022," Zomato said.

“This is to further inform the exchange that Zomato Hyperpure Private Limited, material subsidiary of the Company, has acquired the warehousing and ancillary services business of Hands On Trades Private Limited,” it added.

Zomato had announced the deal in June after its board approved the Rs 4,447 crore transaction to acquire Blinkit. The ancillary business was bought for Rs 61 crore.

“Quick commerce has been our stated strategic priority since the last one year. We have seen this industry grow rapidly both in India and globally, as customers have found great value in quick delivery of groceries and other essentials,” Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal had said while announcing the deal.

Blinkit’s annual turnover in the last three fiscals were: Rs 263 crore in FY22, Rs 200 crore in FY21, and Rs 165 crore in FY20.

According to the deal terms, Blinkit’s largest shareholder SoftBank will receive 28.71 crore shares of Zomato, Tiger Global will take home 12.34 crore shares, and BCCL will get 1.5 crore shares and South Korean investor DAOL will get 3.66 crore shares of the food delivery major.

Sequoia’s shareholding in Zomato will rise from 1.33 crore shares to 5.84 crore shares as it will receive 4.51 crore new shares in the company.

Moneycontrol reported earlier this month that Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal has mooted a new identity and mission for the food delivery company, even as its stock witnessed massive sell-off pressure in the last week of July.

Goyal's note, posted on the company's Slack channel, was written last week after shareholders approved its acquisition of Blinkit, a grocery delivery startup that was previously called Grofers.

"Now that the Zomato Blinkit deal is approved, we have three companies- Zomato, Blinkit, and Hyperpure - in the order of business size/impact. In addition to these three, we also have Feeding India. We are now at a stage of life where we are maturing from running (more or less) a single business to running multiple large companies," Goyal wrote in the message, which Moneycontrol reviewed.