Budget hospitality startup Oyo Rooms is allegedly in higher talks with cloud kitchen company freshmen to obtain it for around $30-40 million.
FreshMenu shareholder Zodius Capital may be paid in cash while the founders and investor Lightspeed Venture Partners and GrowthStory will be owed Oyo shares if the deal is finalized.
Light speed a common investor in both the company, brought the two together to the conversation table.
If the deal goes through productively, Oyo will make its foray into online food delivery business. The move is said to improve its hospitality business portfolio and the food is a necessary element to its operation.
Bengaluru-based FreshMenu had been looking to raise capital for the last few months. The deal is being measured as a win-win proposal for both the companies.
"Oyo is building a food team, which will help fresh menu make bigger to more cities under the Oyo brand name. The idea could be more about adding the constituent of food to further build the welcome business rather than getting into the food delivery completely".
Both Oyo and FreshMenu decline to observation on the conjecture. According to the report, FreshMenu clocks about 15,000-20,000 orders daily and if Oyo acquires the startup kitchen, it will leverage highly on the company's communications of 1,70,000 rooms across India.
Oyo's advanced rounds of these deliberations with FreshMenu follow after it recently rose close to $1 billion from Japan's SoftBank with contribution from ride-hailing companies Grab and Didi Chuxing taking up its assessment to $5 billion.
