Zomato planning to raise 8,500 crore rupees again. This comes just three years after its grand IPO where it had raised almost the same amount. The company’s stock prices have doubled in the last ten months.

Interestingly, this fundraise is going to be through a qualified investment placement or QIP when a listed company raises capital from domestic markets without the need to submit any pre-issue filings to market regulators. Only qualified institutional investors are allowed to participate in this kind of a fundraise. All this just as rival Swiggy is prepping for its IPO. And the quick-commerce trio—Blinkit, Instamart, and Zepto are gearing up to expand beyond the metros and into smaller cities. Plus new, deep-pocketed companies like Reliance Retail and Flipkart are also joining into the race. In a letter to shareholders, founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal wrote that the fundraise is intended to ensure a “level playing field with competitors who continue to raise additional capital” and to “strengthen its balance sheet”. There was no mention of how the funds would be used.

At first, this seems like Zomato declaring war in the quick-commerce space. Some analysts believe it could be a move to show the market that it has a balance sheet that is the “strongest of all.

But is that all there is to it?

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