Alibaba Group to sell 26.29 crore Zomato shares on November 30

The sale will take place on Wednesday at an offer floor price of Rs 60 per share – a 5.59% discount to Tuesday’s closing price of Rs 63.55 apiece on the BSE, according to a term sheet issued by investment banker Morgan Stanley, which is brokering the deal.

ET has reviewed a copy of the term sheet.

According to Zomato’s shareholding pattern as of September 30, Alibaba Group affiliates Alipay Singapore Holding Pte Ltd and Antfin Singapore Holding Pte Ltd together owned a 12.98% stake in the Gurgaon-based food delivery platform.
Wednesday’s block sale will be undertaken by Alipay Singapore Holding Pte Ltd.

Alibaba Group did not respond to queries sent by ET until press time Tuesday. Zomato refused to comment on the development.

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Alibaba Group had first invested in Zomato through Ant Financial in 2018, investing $210 million for a 14.7% stake, which was later raised to 23%.

With this partial exit, Alibaba joins a list of Zomato investors that have sold the company’s stock in the last two years. Marquee Zomato shareholders including Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, Uber and Delivery Hero have sold or reduced their stakes in the company.

While Sequoia Capital had earlier reduced its stake back in September-October 2021 from 6.4% to 4.4%, Delivery Hero divested its entire 1.6% in Zomato in July this year through open market operations. In August this year,
Tiger Global and Uber also sold shares in Zomato, with the latter selling
its entire 7.78% stake that it had received as a result of selling its food-delivery business UberEats to Zomato in 2020.

Zomato has been under the spotlight recently for several top-level exits. Earlier this month, its cofounder
Mohit Gupta resigned after spending four-and-a-half years at the company. Prior to that, new initiatives head Rahul Ganjoo and vice president and intercity legends service head Siddharth Jhawar had also quit the company.

For the July-September quarter,
Zomato nearly halved its losses to Rs 250.8 crore, from Rs 434.9 crore a year earlier. The platform also saw revenue from operations expand by 62% year on year to Rs 1,661.3 crore during the three-month period.