Zomato Acquires TechEagle For Food Delivery Via Drones

On Wednesday, online ordering app Zomato made an announcement that an acquisition of TechEagle, a startup based in Lucknow, has just been made. TechEagle will assist Zomato in accessing food delivery using drones market in India.

Vikram Singh Meena founded the Lucknow-based startup back in 2015 when he was still an IIT-Kanpur’s (Indian Institute of Technology) student. The startup firm has been exclusively working on unmanned aerial vehicles development. The company primarily focuses on producing custom-made drones that can carry up to 5kg.

With TechEagle’s assistance, by using hybrid multi-rotor drones, Zomato will establish a hub-to-hub delivery network.

In his statement, Zomato’s founder and CEO, Deepinder Goyal, said that the company is just starting to access the field of aerial innovations. The company aims to build a future where users can expect their ordered online food to be delivered by drones.

Goyal also mentioned that the company’s first step is to design multi-rotor drones that are capable of carrying under 5kg payload and organize delivery circuits to reduce last mail delivery leg.

Zomato has more than 75,000 partners. The company’s food delivery business has been expanded to 100 cities across India. The company claims that 22 million orders have been delivered monthly. Last year, Zomato made an acquisition of Runnr. For its last mile delivery network, the company now has over 1.5 lakh partners. The company has been facing fierce competition from its rival, Swiggy, a Bengaluru-based food delivery network which was founded in 2014 by BITS alumni, Nandan Reddy, and Pilani Sriharsha Majety.

Meena expressed his excitement in the partnership between the two companies to build something that will contribute significantly to the future of Indian food supply chain’s primary and secondary logistics.

The acquisition was made after Zomato confirmed that starting from December 21, Durga Raghunath, Chief Executive Indian Express Digital Media Services, will be working as the company’s Senior Vice President-Growth.