Platform fee hike impact: Zomato founder, CEO Deepinder Goyal turns billionaire as shares hit record high

Zomato Ltd founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal's stake in the online food delivery platform is now worth over $1 billion as the stock climbed 3 per cent earlier today to fresh record high, thanks to reports suggesting a hike in platform fee by Zomato and Swiggy. 
As per the March quarter shareholding pattern, Goyal held 36,94,71,500 Zomato shares, accounting for 4.26 per cent stake in the company. Those 36.94 crore shares at Monday's high of Rs 232 on BSE were worth Rs 8,571.74 crore. At dollar-rupee exchange rate of 83.55, Goyal's stake in Zomato, thus, was worth $1.02 billion intraday.

As per reports, Zomato raised its platform fee to Rs 6 per order from Rs 5 earlier in key markets such as Bengaluru and Delhi. Zomato had in April raised its platform fee to Rs 5 per order from Rs 4 in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Lucknow and National Capital Region. Zomato and Swiggy had last year introduced platform fee at Rs 2 per order initially. Swiggy is also teasing a platform fee of Rs 7 in Bengaluru, which has been struck off and discounted to Rs 6 per order, The Times of India reported. Business Today could not independently verify the report.

For the quarter gone by, Zomato is likely to report a strong set of numbers sequentially for both food delivery and quick commerce businesses on account of IPL season, cricket World Cup and heat waves across the country, which discouraged people from stepping out.

JM Financial expects food delivery business to see a sequential gross order value (GOV) growth of 8 per cent (up 25 per cent YoY, in line with management guidance of 20 per cent-plus growth).

"We see MTUs growing to 2 crore versus 1.9 crore in 4QFY24, whereas ordering frequency and AOV’s can grow 2 per cent/1 per cent QoQ, respectively. Take-rates are likely to expand to 20.8 per cent in Q1 versus 20.6 per cent in 4QFY24 due to further increase in platform fees. A mix of robust GOV growth and take-rate expansion should lead to sequential revenue growth of 9.5 per cent. While we expect marginal improvement in contribution margin (as percentage of GOV) to 7.6 per cent from 7.5 per cent in 4Q," JM Financial said.

This brokerage sees adjusted Q1 Ebitda margin (as percentage of GOV) expanding 30 bps sequentially, aided by operating leverage.