Food delivery startup Zomato becomes India’s first unicorn tech startup to go public at a $12.2 billion valuation

Zomato is an Indian restaurant aggregator and food ordering and delivery platform that enables users to order meals from restaurants and have them delivered. Zomato filed to go public back in April. Yesterday, Zomato made history to become the first Indian unicorn to go public.

Zomato got off to a flying start on Friday with its shares jumping as much as 80% on the first day of trading on Mumbai’s stock exchange. Zomato’s initial public offering price was initially set at 76 rupees a share. But because of big institutional investors in the unicorn startup, the stock opened with a 52.63% premium at 116 rupees per share, valuing the 13-year-old startup at $12.2 billion (about 910 billion rupees). The stock ended the day about 65% above its offer price, giving the company a market value of about $13 billion.

Founded in 2008 by Pankaj Chaddah and Deepinder Goyal, Zomato provides information, menus, and user reviews of restaurants as well as food delivery options from partner restaurants in select cities. Zomato connects over 55 million users to restaurants in 24 countries.

Before going public, Zomato raised a total of $2.1 billion in funding over 21 rounds from investors including Tiger Global, Temasek, Baillie Gifford, Kora, Luxor, Fidelity (FMR), D1 Capital, Baillie Gifford, Mirae, Steadview, and Ant Financial.

“India is a tough market to operate in, but if you are building to succeed in India, you are already exceptional,” Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal wrote in a blog post on Friday. “We are going to relentlessly focus on 10 years out and beyond, and are not going to alter our course for short-term profits at the cost of the long-term success of the company.”

Just like Uber Eats, Zomato also offers a search app that provides detailed information about restaurants which enables consumers to discover, rate, and review restaurants, as well as create their own personal network of foodies for trusted recommendations.

We wrote about Zomato last year after Uber sold its unprofitable and loss-making online food-ordering business in India to local rival Zomato in exchange for a 9.99% stake. The sale helped  Uber Eats to cut its losses and yet keep a stake in a market expected to be worth $15 billion by 2023.