Zomato acquires TechEagle to explore drone-based food delivery

Online restaurant search and discovery platform Zomato has acquired TechEagle Innovations, a drone delivery startup, to help it carve a path toward drone-based food delivery in India.

Zomato has over 75,000 restaurant partners offering food delivery services across 100 cities in India and achieved 21 million orders a month in October 2018. The acquisition is expected to pave the future of food delivery in the country.

TechEagle Innovations, a Lucknow-based startup that works exclusively on drones, will help Zomato create a hub-to-hub delivery network powered by hybrid multi-rotor drones.

Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, Zomato, said, “We are currently at the early stage of aerial innovations and are taking baby steps towards building a tomorrow wherein users can expect a drone to deliver the food they ordered online. We are thrilled to have Vikram and his team join us towards accomplishing this mission. Our first 'delivery job' currently is to design multi-rotor drones that can pick up a payload under 5 kg and set up drone delivery circuits for reducing the last-mile delivery leg. We believe that robots powering the last-mile delivery is an inevitable part of the future and hence is going to be a significant area of investment for us.”

TechEagle was founded in 2015 by Vikram Singh Meena when he was a student at IIT-Kanpur. Since then, his young startup has been actively involved in the development of unmanned aerial vehicles, with prime focus on custom-made drones capable of carrying up to 5 kg payload.

“Zomato is one of the most innovative technology companies in India, and the only company with a singular focus on food. We are excited to be a part of the team and together build something which will certainly play a significant role in the future of primary and secondary logistics in the food supply chain in India,” added Meena.

Zomato will launch its premium subscription programme, Zomato Gold, in Jakarta and Manila. HyperPure is slated to open its next centre in the NCR in a couple of weeks. Through HyperPure, Zomato has already delivered over 15,000 orders, moved 1500 metric tonnes of fresh produce and has orders booked for over $6m per month. Zomato’s corporate catering business, Food@Work, has also been expanding.

Zomato currently delivers 22 million monthly orders. It acquired Runnr last September and currently has over 1.5 lakh delivery partners as a part of its last-mile delivery fleet.  

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