Indian Food Delivery Unicorn Zomato To Hire Bankers, Appoints Legal Advisors For IPO

Food delivery unicorn Zomato, which is gearing up to go public in 2021, is in the process of hiring bankers and has appointed Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Indus Law as legal advisors, said a person familiar with the development.

If the Gurugram-based startup pulls off the IPO, it will join the likes of MakeMyTrip, which listed on NASDAQ in 2010, and Zomato’s single-largest shareholder Info Edge India Ltd, which was listed on BSE in 2006.

“Zomato is in the process of hiring merchant bankers for the IPO. It may go for a domestic IPO but it is yet to be finalized,” the person quoted above said, requesting not to be named.

News portal Moneycontrol reported on Thursday night that Zomato has appointed Kotak Mahindra Bank as the lead merchant bank for the proposed IPO.

In a bid to bolster its cash reserves, the Gurugram-based company has been on a fundraising spree, over the past months, cornering a little more than $270 million in investments, alone this year, from key investors – Tiger Global Management; Temasek, through MacRitchie Investments, Ant Financial and others.

It is also expected to raise a final round of investments, with the participation of existing investors, in the coming months, before the IPO.

As Zomato looks to go public, losses for the firm haven’t seen any significant improvement. Although Zomato doubled its revenue to $394 million in 2019-20, losses also marginally increased to $293 million from $277 million in 2018-19.

Analysts however said the losses wouldn’t impact Zomato’s IPO aspirations.

This article was first published on livemint.com.