Photo/Shetuwang

Oct. 16 (NBD) – Alibaba's financial arm Ant Financial invested an additional 210 million U.S. dollars in Indian restaurant discovery and food delivery startup Zomato Monday after it pumped in around 200 million U.S. dollars in the Indian firm.

India's food delivery industry is currently a five-way battle between Swiggy, Zomato, Ola-Foodpanda, UberEats, and Google Areo, reported The Times of India.

This year, India's food-tech sector has seen lots of Chinese capital flow in. Among the top five, Swiggy and Zomato get the most investment from Chinese investors like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.

The competition in the Indian food delivery market is actually an extension of food delivery battles among the three Chinese behemoths.

According to statistics, Naspers, the biggest stakeholder of Tencent, played a part in Swiggy's three rounds of financing between May 2017 and June 2018, while Meituan-Dianping participated in two of the three rounds. 

Media reports said Swiggy was in talks with a number of investors for an additional 500-700 million U.S. dollars of investment. Tencent expects to contribute the largest portion of the financing, but the talks haven't brought any concrete results.

Alibaba and Baidu both show attention to Zomato, the biggest rival of Swiggy in India.

In February this year, Alibaba put 150 million U.S. dollars in Zomato via Ant Financial. As part of the deal, Ant Financial acquired stakes worth of 50 million U.S. dollars from the Indian entity.

Alibaba's big shareholder Softbank is also eyeing India's food-tech sector. It was looking to put a likely investment of 200-400 billion U.S. dollars in Zomato, reported Indian news outlet LiveMint in May. 

The media agency said in August that SoftBank Vision Fund planned to invest another 500 billion U.S. dollars in the India food delivery company.

Travel services provider Ctrip, with Baidu as its biggest stakeholder, is also eyeing a share of the food market. It plans to inject 100 million U.S. dollars into Zomato, The Times of India reported.

Regarding the heated-up situation in the Indian food delivery market, industry experts said consumer behaviors in India are similar to those in China. As a result, business models which have been proved successful in China can be directly applied in India. Chinese firms, of course, will definitely want a slice of the cake.