China's Tencent Holdings in talks with global firms to invest in food delivery platform Swiggy

Chinese multinational investment firm Tencent Holdings Limited has reportedly held discussions with some global investors to pump in around $500-$700 million in food delivery platform Swiggy, a media report said. The latest investment, if finalised, will value Swiggy at $2.5-3 billion and will mark the online foods delivery platform’s third fundraiser this year, The Economic Times reported. “The funding size under discussion is around $650 million, with Naspers looking to invest $200-250 million. However, the talks are yet to take definite shape and will take another 3-4 weeks to crystallise,” a source familiar with the development was quoted as saying by the newspaper. In June this year, Swiggy raised $210 million (over Rs 1,430 crore) in a fresh round of funding led by Naspers and DST Global. The Series G funding also saw participation from existing shareholder, Meituan-Dianping and new investor, Coatue Management. The June investment followed a $100 million Series F round in February, also led by Naspers with participation from existing shareholder, Meituan-Dianping. [caption id=“attachment_5110471” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. News18 Gujarati[/caption] Founded in 2014, Swiggy has over 35,000 restaurant partners and 40,000 delivery executives spread across 15 cities, as of June. Swiggy has so far raised $465 million in seven rounds of funding. Recently, Swiggy acquired Mumbai-based on-demand delivery platform Scootsy in an all-cash deal which was likely to be to the tune of Rs 50 crore. With this acquisition, Swiggy planned to strengthen Scootsy’s curated restaurant network and help the brand expand to newer cities on the back of its operational excellence and backend strength, the company said in a statement. Scootsy, an intra-city online service founded in 2015, would continue to operate as an independent app post the acquisition. Swiggy is currently operational in cities like New Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. Founded in 1998, Tencent’s main business is video games but the company also runs China’s dominant social network, WeChat, with more than 1 billion users. Tencent founder Pony Ma is now ranked 21 on Forbes’ rich list, with a net worth of $38.3 billion, just ahead of Alibaba’s Jack Ma with $38.2 billion. With inputs from agencies