People close to the development said that Zomato is in talks to invest as much as $500 million in Grofers, making it the food-delivery platform's largest investment so far in a company.

The financing will likely value the Albinder Dhindsa-led Grofers at around $1.5 billion, said sources.

“Talks are on between the two companies and Zomato is most likely to invest the full $500 million by itself,” said one of the people. “There were some discussions with SoftBank and others, but those have not fructified into anything yet.”

Last week, while announcing Zomato’s quarterly results, Deepinder Goyal said in a blogpost, “Within all the businesses that we are looking at today, quick commerce (delivery of products in less than 30 minutes) is clearly emerging as one of the most promising ones. While we decided to not build quick commerce on our platform, we are excited about the progress of our partner company. Grofers has made it in the 10-minute delivery space. We are likely to invest more in this space in the near term”.

“We are investing in some really good founders and companies-all in synergistic or adjacent areas to our business. We hope that over time, some of these will choose to merge with Zomato to continue on their growth path. We are not asking any of these founders or companies for future M&A rights. We want chemistry do to work here,” he had said.

“Hopefully, it is not a financial but a strategic bet. And we’ll see whether it makes sense for us to merge at some point or not. But right now it’s too early to say anything,” he had said last month.

Zomato’s move to double down on the fast-growing quick delivery segment comes on the back of rival Swiggy prioritising its Instamart.

Grofers said in a blog post that it had opened 200 dark stores in the last three months and would add 150 more in the next 45 days.