Runnr Raises Around $7 Million in Funding From Investors

Earlier this year, TinyOwl and Roadrunnr merged together to form Runnr, one of the many food delivery startups in the country. Times of India reported that the company has now raised around $7 million from investors. Amongst the investors are Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Venture Partners, who are co-leading this round of funding. In the early rounds of funding when the companies were separate, Sequoia Capital and Nexus were the early investors, but this time around, Sequioa has not joined the ranks of investors.

Despite the shutting down and merging of companies, investors are still looking for the right place to put their money. Roadrunnr was in the process of raising funds to boost business when they acquired TinyOwl in a share-swap transaction helmed by the investors. Currently, Nexus, Sequoia, Matrix and the startups founds collectively hold around 17% in Runnr. As individual companies, talks with potential investors failed and together they were able to raise $50 million from venture capitals.

With the acquisition, Runnr joins the food delivery market alongside Swiggy, Zomato and Foodpanda, who are already very well established in the market. While Runnr is making enough waves and has enough clients on board, it’s also not easy to compete in a market where there are established brands already working the same process.

When they launched in 2015, Roadrunnr was a B2B hyperlocal on-demand delivery service that helps book, track and manage deliveries at scale. And TinyOwl was started in 2014 and just before the acquisition, they had shut down services in all cities except for Mumbai.

According to the report by Times of India, sources privy to these new developments said that the reason Sequoia refrained from another round of investments with Runnr was because of their investment in Zomato, which is a competitor for the Bengaluru-based company.

In a time when food delivery startups are getting the boot and being ousted by clients and shutting down regularly, this is a huge development for Runnr.