JOIN USUber Eats sells India food business to Zomato
Food delivery and aggregator platform Zomato early Tuesday morning announced that it has acquired Uber’s food delivery business in India, Uber Eats in an all-stock transaction, which gives Uber 9.99% ownership in Zomato.
This essentially means that Uber Eats in India will discontinue operations and direct restaurants, delivery partners, and users of the Uber Eats app will be migrated to the Zomato platform, effective Tuesday.
Both companies have thus, far declined to give any numbers on the deal.
Uber Eats, which was launched in 2017 competed in India alongside Zomato and Softbank backed Unicorn Swiggy. Analysts suggest that exiting the food business would help the ride-hailing platform free up resources to compete with Softbank backed Ola in the competitive ride-hailing market.
“The competition in this space is going to continue to be intense, and the food delivery category is still very small compared to the overall foodservice market in India,” Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal said in a blog.
“Through this deal, Uber Eats India users now become Zomato users. I want to assure Uber Eats India users that their user experience won’t be compromised in any way – if at all, the scale gives us higher density to make our deliveries faster," he added.
Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said: “Our Uber Eats team in India has achieved an incredible amount over the last two years, and I couldn’t be prouder of their ingenuity and dedication. India remains an exceptionally important market to Uber and we will continue to invest in growing our local rides business. We have been very impressed by Zomato’s ability to grow rapidly in a capital-efficient manner and we wish them continued success. ”