Indian cab-aggregator unicorn Ola has acquired Foodpand India, run by Germany-based Delivery Hero Group. Run by ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, Ola will also be investing around $200 million in Foodpanda’s Indian business over an undisclosed period of time.
“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,” Ola said in a statement announcing the acquisition.
After the acquisition goes through, Saurabh Kochhar, current CEO of Foodpanda India will be succeeded by Ola’s founding partner Pranay Jivrajka, Kochhar has decided to move on and pursue other opportunities.
This acquisition is carried out in exchange for Ola stock.
Earlier, Ola’s rival Uber opened a food ordering and delivery platform, UberEATS. This acquisition may be Ola’s indication to Uber that it is buckling up on other related sectors as well and Uber is going to get a tough competition and will have to fight for its presence in India.
“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,” Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-Founder and CEO at Ola said. “With Delivery Hero’s global leadership and Ola’s platform capabilities with unique local insights, this partnership is born out of strength.”
The company is clearly in the mood for expansion after it closed $1,1 billion funding round led by SoftBank Group and Tencent Holdings.
Foodpanda claims to have more than 10,000 restaurants partnerss and presence over 100 cities.
This accquisition doesn’t foray Ola’s first attempt in the food sector. Earlier in 2016, it shutdown one pilot project called Ola Cafe in less than a year after operating in some cities.
Will this acquisition share the same fact? Only time will tell!