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Food delivery giant Zomato and instant delivery service Blinkit, formerly Grofers, have signed a term sheet as a precursor to the merger of the companies. Sources in the know suggest the term sheet was signed in February 2022.
Since August 2021, Zomato already owns a 10 percent stake in Blinkit and will be filling the deal with the Competition Commission of India very soon.
In what is supposed to be an all-stock transaction, Blinkit’s existing investors, which include SoftBank, Tiger Global Management, and Sequoia Capital India, will get shares of Zomato as part of the merger deal. It is noteworthy that Tiger Global and Sequoia are already shareholders in Zomato.
In December 2021, Blinkit rebranded itself to focus on its pivot to quick commerce. During this time, Zomato, already an investor in the company, had said it would invest an additional $500 million to help the e-grocer to bolster its fast delivery.
Moreover, the foodtech platform informed the stock exchanges that it will lend $150 million to Blinkit in one or more tranches with a tenor of up to one year at an interest rate of 12 percent or more.
While Zomato’s investment of $100 million in August 2021 elevated Blinkit to the unicorn club, reports have pegged the merger deal size at $700-750 million, which is below the unicorn valuation for Blinkit. Read more.
Editor’s Pick: Product Roadmap
This week on Product Roadmap, we feature Delhi-NCR based fintech startup PayMe. The full-stack digital lender in the personal loan space aims to eliminate the difficulty of getting financial assistance by leveraging modern technologies. Read more.
Startup Spotlight
Accelerating B2B cash collections
Aravind Gopalan and his colleague Raja Jayaraman realised that B2B enterprises were using B2C payment methods.
This led the duo to start work on the SaaS-based fintech platform Growfin, which connects customers, sales, finance and customer success teams on one platform. Read more.
News & Updates
- Shares of One97 Communications Ltd, the parent company of Paytm, continued their nosedive, falling 6.6 percent to a fresh record low of Rs 630.40 (Rs 585 apiece at the close of day’s trade) in midday trading.
- According to a report by Counterpoint on the smartwatch market in 2021, tech accessory company Noise took Fossil’s place in the top 10 list, with 2.6 percent of the global market share.
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