New Delhi: Swiggy announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Times Internet to acquire Dineout, India’s leading dining out and restaurant tech platform. Dineout will continue to operate as an independent app post the acquisition. Designed to capitalise on Dineout’s unique assets and leading position in the dining out space, the acquisition will enable Swiggy to cater to every food occasion, an official statement said Friday.
Swiggy said it will double down on the synergies with Dineout’s offerings, including dining out table reservations and events. This is the second major move made by Swiggy this year after leading a $180 million round in bike taxi firm Rapido. After Rapido, the Bengaluru-based company had recently joined its arch-rival Zomato to fund restaurant management platform UrbanPiper. Swiggy, until now, was focused on logistics. But the acquisition of Dineout is also indicative of its steps in the direction of improving the restaurant-going experience of its customers.
Dineout was founded in 2012 by Ankit Mehrotra, Vivek Kapoor, Sahil Jain, and Nikhil Bakshi. In 2014, the company was acquired by Times Internet for $10 million. At present, it ensures table reservations across 50,000 restaurants in 20 cities. This acquisition by the SoftBank-backed firm has been in the making for several months and has come at a time when Swiggy is drifting away from business verticals which aren’t sustainable.
One such example is SuprDaily which rolled back its operations from five cities including Delhi (NCR) and Mumbai. Dineout reportedly held conversations with fintech unicorn CRED for acquisition but the talks didn’t result in a deal. Dineout is one of the few properties from which Times Internet has been looking to exit after the sale of MX TakaTak to ShareChat.