Zomato, a leading restaurant discovery and online food ordering platform, has raised $150 million in a fresh round of funding from Ant Financial Services Group, one of the world's leading digital financial services providers.

As part of the transaction, Ant is also buying $50 million worth of shares from Info Edge, taking the total investment from Ant in Zomato to $200 million. This transaction values Zomato in excess of $1 billion.

Zomato will use the investment to further strengthen its leadership position in its core markets by investing in product and technology and by offering more convenient and seamless payment options to its users in partnership with Ant and Ant's strategic mobile wallet partners. Zomato is used by millions every day to decide where to eat in over 10,000 cities across 24 countries. By helping people discover great places around them and providing dedicated engagement and management tool for restaurants big and small, Zomato has secured its place as one of the most widely-used restaurant search and discovery mobile apps in many parts of the world, including India, Middle East, Southeast Asia and Australasia.

Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO of Zomato, said, "At Zomato, our long-term vision is 'better food for more people'. This partnership with Ant will significantly accelerate our journey towards our vision. We believe that Ant is the right strategic partner for our business at this stage and we can gain tremendously by learning from and leveraging their global network, scale and technology."

"Ant Financial is pleased to be part of Zomato's growth journey and hopes to contribute to its future development into a full-fledged food services platform. We plan to work closely with Zomato and share Ant's business and technology know-how in building lifestyle apps. Through our strategic mobile wallet partners in India and across Southeast Asia, we see immense opportunities to collaborate with Zomato to bring a much improved user experience around dining, food ordering and delivery," said Douglas Feagin, president of Ant Financial International. - TradeArabia News Service