Tencent Joins Naspers in a $1 Billion Funding for India

A courier of Swiggy holds take-out food from a Burger King restaurant in Mumbai. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

• Meituan, DST Global and Hillhouse Capital also took part.
• Naspers has favored India and food delivery businesses.

Tencent Holdings Ltd. joined Naspers Ltd. in a $1 billion investment in Indian food delivery service Swiggy, which gains a potentially valuable ally in China’s largest social media and gaming company.

Naspers led the financing, which snagged new backers Hillhouse Capital and Wellington Management in addition to existing investors DST Global, Meituan Dianping and Coatue. The funding round, which Bloomberg reported on in October, marks Swiggy’s third for 2018 and largest to date. Naspers, Africa’s most valuable company, said it put up $660 million.

“Swiggy has ten times the number of orders per month since our first investment” in 2017, said Larry Illg, Naspers’s chief executive officer of food and ventures. “Our latest round of capital will help to accelerate Swiggy’s journey of providing unmatched convenience in food ordering and delivery for Indian consumers.”

Swiggy is one of a clutch of fast-growing Indian startups capitalizing on rapid smartphone adoption across the country. Its value was said to have risen to more than $2 billion after Cape Town-based Naspers led two previous funding rounds, becoming the firm’s biggest shareholder. Since the last funding six months ago, Swiggy has expanded to 42 additional cities in India, the company said in a statement.

Food delivery is a favorite business of Naspers, with investments in Germany’s Delivery Hero and iFood in Brazil. It’s also taken a shine to India as it seeks to replicate a blockbuster early bet on Tencent, where it owns about 31 percent of the stock. This week, the Cape Town-based company took park in a $540 million investment in Indian education startup Byju’s. It owns slices of other Indian businesses such as MakeMyTrip and OLX, and made a $1.6 billion profit from selling its 11 percent stake in e-commerce startup Flipkart this year.

Naspers shares have fallen almost 19 percent this year, valuing the company at 1.2 trillion rand ($84 billion), as a slump in Tencent’s share price dragged down the South African investor.

Bloomberg.com