Zomato acquires sports startup Fitso: Report

Food delivery and restaurant aggregation platform Zomato has reportedly acquired Jogo Technologies, which operates sports facilities provider Fitso.

Zomato has bought 100% of the company in an equity and cash deal, news website Entrackr reported on Thursday. The deal size is reported to be in the range of Rs 80-100 crore.

Notably, Zomato’s co-founder Pankaj Chaddah is an investor in Fitso. Chaddah left the food tech company in March 2018 to set up a mental health platform named Mindhouse.

Zomato did not respond to TechCircle queries on the deal.

For Zomato, the Fitso acquisition takes it outside its mainstay food delivery business. Its last large ticket acquisition happened early last year when it acquired ride hailing app Uber’s food delivery business in India, Uber Eats, for a total consideration of $206 million in a cash and stock transaction.

The Gurugram headquartered restaurant aggregator paid $35 million in cash as part of the transaction. The remainder was paid out in the form of preference shares which converted into a nearly 10% stake for Uber in Zomato.

The deal also comes at a time when Zomato is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) this year. The company closed a $660 million growth round of funding in December, which valued the firm at $3.9 billion.

Zomato has raised over $1.1 billion across multiple rounds since its inception in 2008, as per VCCEdge data.

Fitso was founded by IIT Delhi graduates Saurabh Aggarwal, Naman Sharma and Rahool Sureka in 2015. Sharma is a former Zomato employee while Aggarwal was formerly with Flipkart and Sureka worked with Yepme and UrbanClap in the past.

Fitso Sports standardises facilities at stadiums, fields or courts, implements best practices in facility management using technology and provides trained coaches. According to the company’s LinkedIn page, it operates on a subscription model where members can access and book slots of sports activities like football, basketball, cricket, badminton, tennis, squash, and table tennis across its 13 facilities in Delhi-NCR.

Fitso SEALs, its swimming arm, maintains swimming infrastructure and quality of coaching. It has a network of over 25,000 swimmers and more than 25 all-weather swimming academies across Delhi-NCR and Hyderabad.

The startup has raised $1.5 million in pre-Series A funding from early-stage capital firm SRI Capital, investment banking firm Sprout Capital, venture capital firm IPV Capital, Pankaj Chaddah, and Ashish Gupta, co-founder, Helion Venture Partners in September 2019.

Previously, the company raised a total of $400,000 in two rounds of angel funding from Sujeet Kumar, Udaan's co-founder Sujeet Kumar; Intellenet Global Services CEO Bhupender Singh, PolicyBaazar CEO Yashish Dhaiya; Varun Khurana, former chief technology officer, Grofers; Samar Singla, CEO, Jugnoo and Vinay Bansal, chief financial officer, Wildcraft.