Indian cab aggregator Ola has announced the acquisition of Foodpanda’s India business from with Germany based Delivery Hero Group, which owns Foodpanda in India. Ola has also committed to invest $200 million into the Foodpanda India business.
This deal includes the transfer of Foodpanda’s India business to Ola in an acquisition deal in exchange for Ola stock. In a statement, Ola claims that the collaboration between both players will help Foodpanda India grow as the most preferred online food delivery service in the country. Foodpanda India will benefit from Ola’s scale and efficiencies as a platform, also having leveraged learnings from Delivery Hero’s global best practices.
Ola and Delivery Hero will continue to collaborate on building the online food delivery ecosystem in India.
Saurabh Kochhar, who was the CEO of Foodpanda India until recently will move on to pursue other opportunities. Pranay Jivrajka, Founding Partner at Ola, has been appointed as interim CEO of this business unit and will be supported by the existing leadership team at Foodpanda India.
“I’m excited about our partnership with Delivery Hero as we team up to take Foodpanda India to the next level. As one of India’s pioneers in the food delivery space, Foodpanda has come to be a very efficient and profit focused business over the last couple of years. Our commitment to invest $200mn in Foodpanda India will help the business be focused on growth by creating value for customers and partners. With Delivery Hero’s global leadership and Ola’s platform capabilities with unique local insights, this partnership is born out of strength,” Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder and CEO at Ola, said in a statement.
“The partnership with Ola will allow us to further consolidate markets where it strategically makes sense to collaborate with leading local players. At the same time, we consider our stake in Ola as a very valuable asset, while Ola’s investment commitment in Foodpanda India is a clear and confident signal to the Indian market,” Niklas Östberg, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Delivery Hero AG, said.
Foodpanda currently operates across 100+ cities in India with menus from over 15,000 restaurants. For FY17, it reported a 6% growth in revenues at Rs 62.16 crore while its losses narrowed from Rs 142.64 crore in FY16 to Rs 44.81 crore.