Ola buys Foodpanda India for $200 million to compete with Uber

Ola announced that it acquired Foodpanda India from the parent company DeliveryHero. The deal gets Ola into the food delivery space, an expansive angle for the Uber rival in the country.

DeliveryHero has taken an undisclosed amount of stock exchange of Ola as Foodpanda’s Indian business gets an ideal umbrella for its own expansion. DeliveryHero has been ‘shopping around’ the Indian business recently and the announcement of today included Saurabh Kochar leaving its leadership “to pursue other opportunities.”

The deal entails Ola investing $200 million in Foodpanda India that includes a claim on 12,000 restaurant partners in 100 cities of the country.

On the other hand, Foodpanda is yet to spark up in India and operation issues like fake listings and more have been pushing things back for them. This seemed to turn around with the deal.

The company is known for not disclosing country-specific business figures but ‘order numbers from “Asia” – which includes India and Southeast Asia – grew 47 percent year-on-year in the recent Q3 2017 period to catch up with Europe.’

Returning to Ola, the company has experience in the food industry, Ola Cafe was a pilot project that got shut down in 2016. It operated in a few tier-one cities for a time period close to one year.

Well, there are numerous scenarios that can be considered regarding the outcomes of the deal but it is for sure that Ola has got a big boost from this deal to compete with Uber.