Shares of Zomato rose nearly 4% in opening trade on Wednesday amid strong volume, with 29.8 crore shares changing hands over the counter in the first half an hour of trade so far. While the buyers and sellers were not known immediately, it was reported that Alipay Singapore Holding, an arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s affiliate Ant Group, was looking to sell its entire 3.44% stake in online food delivery company via block deal today. The floor price for the deal was fixed at ₹111.28 per share, a discount of 1.7% to Tuesday’s closing price, which would fetch ₹3,290 crore to the Chinese payments group.

Ant Group’s another entity Antfin Singapore Holding owns 6.39% stake in Zomato as of September 30, 2023.

Amid block deal buzz, Zomato shares opened 2% higher at ₹116.15 against the previous closing price of ₹113.80 on the BSE. In the early trade so far, the largecap stock gained 3.7% to ₹118, while the market capitalisation crossed ₹1 lakh crore.

Zomato has witnessed stake selling by foreign institutional investors after the one-year lock-in period for investors who bought shares in the company’s initial public offering (IPO) ended in July last year. Last month, SoftBank offloaded 1.1% equity in food-tech firm to raise ₹1,040 crore, while Internet Fund III, a venture capital fund managed by Tiger Global, and Apoletto Asia, a fund backed by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, partially trimmed their stake in the company in August this year.