The two biggest names in the Indian food delivery market, Swiggy and Zomato, have recently backed urban technology firm UrbanPiper in a $24 million funding round.
This investment boosts UrbanPiper’s services, which provide restaurants with a unified platform to manage their day-to-day operations and boost customer engagement.
This move further strengthens the rivalry between the two giants, as they continue to compete in gaining the top spot in India’s thriving food delivery landscape.
Swiggy and Zomato, food delivery rivals in India, back UrbanPiper in $24 million funding
Swiggy and Zomato are India’s leading food delivery rivals. Swiggy is a Bangalore based company launched in August 2014, providing food delivery service across 100+ cities in India. They pride themselves on their ability to deliver hot, fresh meals in the shortest time.
Zomato, on the other hand, was founded a month after Swiggy in September 2014 and has expanded to 24 countries and 26 million user following. It allows its customers to order online from thousands of restaurants across India.
Swiggy and Zomato have recently raised a fund of $24 million for UrbanPiper, an integrated point-of-sale (POS) based solutions company providing technology solutions to restaurants across India. This investment helps bridge gaps between restaurant back-of-the-house operations and the end customer by enabling businesses with ease of technology integration while goaling up it’s delivery objectives. In addition, such investments would open new opportunities for Swiggy or Zomato and the hospitality industry as they can leverage advanced technologies like POS integration.
This collaboration points towards an exciting journey ahead as two big players join with UrbanPiper to provide a seamless experience for their customers and amplify both companies’ commitment towards innovation & digitalization .
Overview of UrbanPiper
UrbanPiper is a technology platform based in Bengaluru, India. It provides cloud-based digital solutions for businesses in the hospitality industry. The platform helps simplify business operations and automate tasks such as order taking, processing payments, inventory management, customer feedback collection, and more. In March 2021, UrbanPiper saw an investment of $24 million from food delivery rivals Swiggy and Zomato.
The company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology platform integrates with various Point of Sale (POS) systems to enable restaurant owners to manage their operations efficiently and quickly. This also helps them to deliver faster service to customers at a lower cost while eliminating tedious manual tasks associated with the ordering process including payment acceptance, reconciliation and loyalty programs.
Furthermore, using UrbanPiper’s plug-and-play technology platform, restaurant owners can access a single integrated dashboard that can help streamline sales across multiple channels such as delivery partners (like Swiggy or Zomato) and corporate orders through corporate orders partners like Portify or Dine Out or order ahead avenues like Toast. In addition, this integration helps automate manual processes related to data fetching from online ordering sites to tracking actual vs projected sales performance of restaurant outlets apart from overall analytics tracking.
In addition to that, its advanced reporting feature allows operators to measure product performance at outlet level by providing vendor comparisons based on order volume and sales numbers within one single aggregated dashboard – helping restaurants make smarter decisions about their ordering channels based on insights driven from real time data metrics – a valuable tool for managing operational costs associated with running a food delivery business profitably!
Investment Details
Recently, food delivery rivals in India, Swiggy and Zomato, backed UrbanPiper in a big way with the $24 million funding. This investment has come at a crucial juncture when food delivery platforms are feeling the pinch of the pandemic.
Let’s look at the details of this investment to understand what this means for the industry in India.
Amount of Investment
Food delivery rivals Swiggy and Zomato recently invested in a platform that connects e-food businesses to diners, UrbanPiper. The two companies backed the Bengaluru-based startup raising $24 million in its Series B funding round.
Swiggy invested $8 million while Zomato poured $16 million into the cloud kitchen management, payment and analytics platform. Sequoia India led the round, with participation from existing investors Bulgaria Investment Fund and BeeNext. RTP Global had previously invested $5 Million in UrbanPiper’s Series A funding round.
Urbanpiper is a software as a service (SaaS) platform for e-commerce businesses that enables ordering, delivery and payments through multiple channels like Swiggy, Zomato and others such as Grofers and BigBasket. It also has built intangibles like store management tools across domains from order processing to customer feedback loops.
The investment claims to strengthen Swiggy’s position as an omnichannel food delivery wholesaler across connected POSs (point of sale). This is expected to reduce operational costs significantly for food businesses ranging from larger chains to single stores seeking more efficient methods of ordering/delivery management/payment processing etc using this unified technology platform by Urbanpiper. On the other hand, Zomato will be making use of its unified offering which it says increases customer acquisition, engagement on its platform while deepening relationships with restaurants through various features including loyalty programs etc., thereby supplementing their special offers section that grants access to discounts exclusively at partner restaurants based on a user’s dining history.
Investors
UrbanPiper, a startup that supports digital operations of small and medium businesses, said it has raised $24 million in a new financing round. The funding was led by food delivery rivals Swiggy and Zomato, along with existing investor Sequoia India.
The funds will be utilised by UrbanPiper to further enhance its product portfolio for merchants and accelerate their expansion in India. Other existing investors including Chiratae Ventures, Kalaari Capitalism; Lightspeed Venture Partners US and Evolvence India Fund participated in the latest funding round.
“Digital transformation of local commerce is at the heart of UrbanPiper’s mission to enable Indian merchants with modern cloud-based technologies to compete with larger companies. Our products are powering hyperlocal businesses to automate their operational processes while getting access to the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), to harness tremendous value from the data collected,” said Abhinav Chatterjee, co-founder and CEO of UrbanPiper.
Use of Funds
Swiggy and Zomato, food delivery rivals in India, have recently backed software platform UrbanPiper in a $24 million Series A funding round. This marks the first time the two have looked to invest together in a single deal.
UrbanPiper is India’s largest enterprise SaaS platform for food and grocery store owners. It helps businesses manage their day-to-day operations, such as acceptance of digital payments through various non-traditional channels, inventory management and its integration with delivery partners. This funding round includes participation from other investors, such as Unilever Ventures and existing investor Accel India.
The funds raised by UrbanPiper will help bolster their existing services, build new products for their wide array of customers and expand their reach geographically across the country. The company also plans to use some capital to grow its team by investing heavily in its engineering team to develop new products and push further innovation. In addition, they will invest resources towards initiatives that can help SMBs acquire new customers quickly while maintaining customer loyalty on its platform over time thus increasing sales growth.
Impact on the Food Delivery Market
Swiggy and Zomato, two of India’s biggest food delivery rivals, have recently backed UrbanPiper in a $24 million funding round, marking a significant milestone in the food delivery market.
This new investment could have a massive effect on the industry, and it is important to examine the potential impacts that this news could have.
Increased Competition
The latest $24 million investment by food delivery rivals Swiggy and Zomato in Indian tech startup UrbanPiper will further heighten competition in the Indian food delivery market. This strategic funding is expected to fuel the growth of the company’s technological solutions to make restaurant aggregators more effective in optimising their operations and delivery process.
UrbanPiper provides technology infrastructure for powering three fundamental elements for daily restaurant operations – Payments, Order Management, and Logistics Management. In addition, the product also offers additional features such as loyalty tracking, inventory management, online ordering convergence with website/apps/voice, analytics platform, and cloud kitchen aggregation capabilities. It is estimated that these advanced technology solutions will help restaurants increase their efficiency and reduce operational costs, while also providing consumers with a better dining experience.
Adding UrbanPiper into the fold will further extend the competitive edge of both Swiggy and Zomato across India’s growing online food market. With a spate of new partnerships, investments and initiatives designed to capture substantial market share through innovations that leverage data-driven technologies, this competitive landscape in India’s food delivery market looks set to become even more intense over time.
New Business Opportunities
The successful funding round of $24 million by food delivery rivals Swiggy and Zomato and other investors has opened up many new business opportunities for UrbanPiper. As a result, this technology software startup will also expand into the international market.
UrbanPiper will further its mission of enabling businesses to accelerate their growth and expand their reach as it takes advantage of this investment. In addition, this development is expected to bridge the gap between online ordering platforms and offline stores, offering customers various options for food delivery.
UrbanPiper’s technology suite provides automation tools, insights, and analytics tools that enable integration operations with food delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato. With nearly 40% of food transactions in India now happening through a mobile app or website, these tools are becoming increasingly necessary for restaurants to leverage digital technologies and manage orders effectively.
This strategic investment will also open up new opportunities for Swiggy and Zomato that could help them outcompete each other on different levels including pricing structures, order fulfillment speed and user experience on their respective apps. In addition, the investment will introduce new features for users such as live status tracking of food orders from restaurant kitchen till customer home delivery and exclusive offers from restaurants such as loyalty programs or discounts.
For restaurants looking to strengthen their presence in the competitive online market space, this could be an ideal opportunity to maximize profits by leveraging automated technology solutions that can provide better control over order management processes and improved speed in order processing times.
Potential Consolidation
Swiggy and Zomato, two of India’s leading food delivery rivals, have recently returned UrbanPiper in a $24 million funding. This marks a further step towards consolidation in the food delivery market, which is seeing increasing mergers and acquisitions.
The funding round was led by LightSpeed Ventures, but Swiggy and Zomato also participated. UrbanPiper provides an unified operating platform to business owners that helps them manage multiple online ordering channels across mobile and web apps, calls and more. In addition, it provides more efficient order processing capabilities that helps businesses gain control over inventory, menu management and customer insights.
With this investment round, Swiggy and Zomato have taken their first steps towards consolidation in the market. The pair hopes to tap into the existing customer base possessed by both companies to create seamless customer experiences. This could create monopolies in different cities or areas where one or another of these companies might dominate over competition with their joint resources.
It will also be interesting to see how smaller players react as they may face overwhelming competition from two powerful giants to ensure faster deliveries to customers at competitive prices with quality services. The impact—positive or negative—of this race towards consolidation on consumers remains unseen. Still, it will likely become clearer as these firms continue their collaborative venture into the near future.
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