New ventures
Zomato has decided to enter into the financial services business and will create a non-banking finance company (NBFC) as a wholly-owned subsidiary for the purpose.
The proposed paid-up capital of NBFC will be Rs 3 crore and the authorised capital is pegged at Rs 10 crore. The name of the company is being finalised subject to approval by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Zomato said in a filing with the BSE.
However, the subsidiary will need Reserve Bank of India’s approval to carry on the financial services business.
In a stock exchange filing, Zomato had said it will invest ₹112.21 crore in ad tech firms. AdOnMo Pvt. Ltd for a 19.48% stake and Rs 37.39 crore in restaurant software maker UrbanPiper Technology Pvt. Ltd for a 5% stake.
High hopes
According to Zomato, it will utilize AdOnMo’s platform. This targets digital advertising beyond personal devices to outdoor digital screens, for customer acquisition. As of 31 March 2021, Zomato had a turnover of Rs 3.27 crore.
UrbanPiper is a business-to-business (B2B) software platform. It enables restaurants to integrate multiple players through a single digital interface. In the filing, Zomato said UrbanPiper processes 12 million orders a month at over 23,000 restaurants. UrbanPiper raised $7.5 million in its Series A round of funding led by Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital in October 2019.
Interestingly, the two investments and the NBFC plan comes at a time many shareholders have raised concerns over the profitability of new-age technology companies like Zomato.
