Companies news
Zeta’s Employee Benefits Business Merges Into Sodexo BRS India
Zeta will hold a minority stake in Sodexo BRS India post the merger Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services (Sodexo BRS) is the largest company in the meal and gift vouchers space
Mumbai: Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services (Sodexo BRS), the employee benefits and rewards unit of Sodexo India, is merging Bengaluru-based fintech company Zeta’s employee benefits business into its firm, its senior executives said in an interaction with Mint. Zeta will hold a minority stake in Sodexo BRS India post the merger.
The merger comes a day after Sodexo led a close to $60 million investment in Zeta to pick up a minority stake in the four-year-old neo banking startup, at a valuation of over $300 million. Zeta plans to use the capital to expand its business across 15 countries including the US, the UK, in Europe and in Southeast Asia.
“While we await regulatory approvals, the intent is to move all of Zeta’s existing clients and users on to the combined Sodexo-Zeta platform, including all the multi-benefits the platform offers. So, we are going to go with one product into the market. That’s also one of the reasons we are merging, because we want to bring the best of both— the strong technology platform of Zeta and Sodexo’s merchant network and client ecosystem," said Anish Sarkar, chief executive officer of Sodexo BRS India.
Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services (Sodexo BRS), which has been offering employee benefits and rewards for the last 22 years in India, is the largest company in the meal and gift vouchers space.
Sodexo offers meal and gift vouchers to over three million customers in over 1,700 cities in India through its partnerships with more than 11,000 Indian companies. Zeta offers a digital platform to enterprises for managing employee benefits and allowances, and a corporate gifting platform as well. Till date, Zeta has over 14,000 corporate clients and around 1.9 million users making at least 1 million transactions a day across its platform.
“Sodexo started to partner with Zeta in India two years ago and we are very happy with the results of our common work here. It has brought value to all our stakeholders, clients, consumers and merchants. We have already started to work together outside India and we are happy to expand and strengthen our partnership with Zeta," said Sebastien Godet, Asia president of Sodexo BRS.
After the merger, Sodexo would launch a single electronic card, which would include services provided by Sodexo’s meal card and a multi-benefits card powered by RuPay, the domestic card payment scheme of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
“In India, we will have a unique digital employee benefits product that we do not have in any other country where we have Sodexo BRS. Zeta will be our strategic partner to replicate this digital employee benefits ecosystem that we have started in India in other countries, and that was the rationale behind our investment in Zeta’s global expansion," said Godet.
Source : LiveMint
