Zomato acquires Runnr in all stock deal

It is a piece of news that is being speculated for some time now, and on Wednesday, CEO of Zomato, Deepinder Goyal confirmed it on his blog.
“I’m very excited to share, that beginning today, you will see our team in their red Zomato t-shirts delivering food to you. We’ve been adding to our Runnr team steadily over the past week; it is already 1500 strong, and growing by the day. Just to ensure that you get your food with a smile, and on time!
Yes, that’s right, we just signed our long-rumoured acquisition of Runnr,” he wrote.
Goyal, in his blog states that the deal has been in place for a couple of months now, and both the teams have been working closely with each other quite some time now to ensure that they get along with each other.
Founder & CEO of Runnr, Mohit Kumar, also moved to Delhi from Bangalore two months ago. He will remain the Founder and CEO of Runnr and will continue developing his vision along with the rest of the founding team.
The deal does not restrict Runnr’s functioning as an independent logistics company and will allow the firm to continue deliveries within the food sector for other players as also deliveries in areas of pharma, e-commerce and grocery, which Runnr has been undertaking so far.
“The independent velocities and strengths of the different teams at Zomato gave the team at Runnr the required comfort that they would have all the levers they needed to build the business the way they always wanted to – while being aligned with a much larger mission,” Goyal stated in his blog.
The combination of Zomato and Runnr, promises a delightful food delivery service in India and UAE – end to end – listings, discovery, reviews, ordering, as well as logistics.
Runnr is already efficiently fulfilling 300,000 orders a month – which is just a tad less than 10 per cent of Zomato’s food ordering volumes.
Over the last 18-24 months, Zomato has been steadily reducing its operational losses and pruning revenues with FY17 operational losses shrinking over 81 per cent to Rs 77 crore. A large part of the strategy involved staying away from self-fulfilled deliveries, regarded by experts as the most cash-burning exercise in the food business.