Ola to acquire Foodpanda's India business from Delivery Hero Group

On December 20, 2017, India’s most popular flexible platform entered into a partnership with Germany based Delivery Hero Group (“Delivery Hero”), the leading global online food ordering and delivery marketplace. This collaboration will help Foodpanda India grow as the most preferred online food delivery service in the country.

The taxi aggregator has bought Foodpanda India for about $40m, while separately investing the $200m on rival UberEats, according to sources.

Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder and CEO at Ola, said, “I’m excited about our partnership with Delivery Hero as we team up to take Foodpanda India to the next level. As one of India’s pioneers in the food delivery space, Foodpanda has come to be a very efficient and profit focused business over the last couple of years. Our commitment to invest $200mn in Foodpanda India will help the business be focused on growth by creating value for customers and partners. With Delivery Hero’s global leadership and Ola’s platform capabilities with unique local insights, this partnership is born out of strength.

I look forward to welcoming the Foodpanda India team to the Ola family.” He added, “I also thank Saurabh Kochhar for building a wonderful team at Foodpanda India over the last couple of years and wish him the very best in his new endeavours.”

Niklas Östberg, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Delivery Hero AG, said, “The partnership with Ola will allow us to further consolidate markets where it strategically makes sense to collaborate with leading local players. At the same time, we consider our stake in Ola as a very valuable asset, while Ola’s investment commitment in Foodpanda India is a clear and confident signal to the Indian market.” He added, “The Foodpanda India team has done a tremendous job building the business and we look forward to supporting them and the Ola team in the future.”

Khaitan & Co acted for Delivery Hero and Foodpanda on the corporate aspects with assistance on the Intellectual Property related aspects from Counsel Shailendra Bhandare and Associate Sourav Dan with the team led by Director Ketan Kothari, Counsel Stuti Galiya and Associates Bidya Mohanty, Varun Narayan and Urvashi Mehta. Consultant Subramanian Ramaswamy was consulted on corporate secretarial aspects.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas Partner Reeba Chacko advised Ola on this deal.

Other firms like IndusLaw have acted for Ola in the past, of which the taxi aggregator has been a steady client since 2014 on various investment deals.