Zomato Share Worth ₹947 Cr Sold; SoftBank Likely Seller

Around 10 crore shares of online food delivery platform Zomato, amounting to an 1.17 per cent of the company's equity, changed hands on Wednesday at a total deal value of around Rs 947 crore.

SoftBank's SVF Growth Fund is the likely seller

Japanese company SoftBank's SVF Growth Fund is the likely seller in this mega transaction, according to CNBC TV18. The report had earlier said that SVF Growth Fund may sell 10 crore shares of the company or 1.17 per cent of the total equity via block deals at Rs 94 per share.

SVF Growth (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. had 3.35 per cent stake in Zomato, totalling around 28 crore shares.

Zomato shares

Zomato shares reached near Rs 100 after the block deal, and were hovering around Rs 98.45 in morning. The fresh block sale came after another foreign institutional investor, Tiger Global Management, offloaded its entire shareholding of 1.44 per cent in Zomato on Monday.

The deal earned Tiger Global a total of Rs 1,123.85 crore. US-based investment major, via its VC fund Internet Fund III Pte Ltd, exited online food delivery platform Zomato. The VC firm sold around 12.34 crore shares or 1.44 per cent stake in Zomato at an average price of Rs 91.01 per share.

Brokerage firm HSBC maintained its buy rating on Zomato and raised its price target to Rs 120 from Rs 102 earlier. The note said that hyperlocal can become a much bigger business for Zomato in the long-term.

Zomato's stock is likely to be volatile in the near term on account of market speculation around possible exits by some pre-IPO shareholders (VC/PE/Chinese investors) of the company as well as erstwhile shareholders of Blinkit who had received it under a share swap deal, JM Financial Institutional Securities had said in its recent report.