Yandex.Taxi — the taxi service of Yandex which is preparing to merge its activities with Uber in Russia and neighboring countries — has acquired food delivery service Foodfox.
The two companies declined to comment officially on the deal, but an unnamed internal source at Yandex.Taxi told RBC, a major Russian business publication, that the taxi hailing service purchased 100% of Foodfox, paying some 500 million rubles ($8.4 million at the current exchange rate) to its owners.
This rather low valuation might be explained by the difficulty of fining new financial investors to fuel company development, RBC heard.
Yandex.Taxi’s interest in the food delivery segment is connected to its merger with Uber, which includes UberEATS activity in Russia. Due to the latter’s relatively weak position on the local market, Yandex.Taxi seeks to increase its market share in this field by acquiring Foodfox, believe industry insiders cited by RBC
Yandex Financial Director Greg Abovsky said on Friday, November 17, in an interview with Bloomberg, that the company has plans to “invest very aggressively in the food delivery market.”
Last year FoodFox attracted $1 million in a round of funding led by Target Global, an international venture fund with Russian backers. The round also involved several individual investors, including Florian Jansen and Niels Tonsen, co-founders at online clothing retailer Lamoda.ru.
Foodfox, which launched in 2016, partners with more than 1,000 restaurants in Moscow, notes RBC. According to business database SPARK-Interfax, its revenue last year amounted to some 8.9 million rubles with a net loss of 40.2 million rubles.
The Russian food delivery market is hot with a series of recent investment, merger and acquisition deals. These involved, in particular, Mail.Ru Group (acquisition of Delivery Club and ZakaZaka) and Mitsui (investment in ChefMarket).
