Zomato

Zomato () is an Indian multinational restaurant aggregator and food delivery company founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008. Zomato provides information, menus and user-reviews of restaurants as well as food delivery options from partner restaurants in select cities. , the service is available in 24 countries and in more than 10,000 cities.

History

Zomato was founded as FoodieBay in 2008 by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah who worked for Bain & Company. The website started as a restaurant listing and recommendation portal. They renamed the company Zomato in 2010 as they were unsure if they would "just stick to food" and also to avoid a potential naming conflict with eBay.

With the introduction of .xxx domains in 2011, Zomato also launched zomato.xxx, a site dedicated to food porn.

In 2011, it expanded across India to Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad. In 2012, it expanded operations internationally in several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Qatar, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, and South Africa. In 2013, expanded to in New Zealand, Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia, with website and apps available in Turkish, Portuguese, Indonesian and English languages. In April 2014, it launched in Portugal, which was followed by launches in Canada, Lebanon and Ireland in 2015.

In January 2015, Zomato acquired Seattle-based restaurant discovery portal Urbanspoon, which led to the firm's entry into the United States and Australia. This U.S.-expansion brought Zomato into direct competition with similar models such as Yelp and Foursquare. In an effort to expand its business beyond restaurant listing, Zomato piloted an online payments facility in partnered restaurants in Dubai called Zomato Cashless in February 2015. This was discontinued a few months later.

Zomato started its food delivery service in India in 2015, initially partnering with companies such as Delhivery and Grab to fulfill deliveries from restaurants that did not have its own delivery service. In April 2015, Zomato acquired the American online table reservation platform NexTable, which was subsequently renamed as Zomato Book. In January 2016, it launched Zomato Book's table reservation facility on its application in India. In April 2015, Zomato acquired cloud-based point of sale company MapleGraph Solutions, and in April 2016, it launched its own Android point of sale system for restaurants called Zomato Base, which was built on MaplePOS.

In February 2017, the firm announced plans to launch Zomato Infrastructure Services, a cloud kitchen infrastructure service to help partner restaurants expand their presence without incurring any fixed costs. Later that year, it introduced a paid membership program called Zomato Gold using which subscribers could get offers and discounts on dining and food delivery at Zomato's partner restaurants.

In February 2018, Zomato became a unicorn startup after raising 200 million from Ant Financial at a valuation of 1.1 billion. Later that year, it shut down operations of Zomato Infrastructure Services. In 2018, it acquired WOTU and rebranded it as Hyperpure to supply food ingredients such as grains, vegetables and meat to restaurants from its warehouses. In December 2018, Zomato launched its annual multi-city food and entertainment carnival called Zomaland.

In September 2019, the firm laid off almost 10% of its workforce (540 people) tending to back-end activities like customer service, merchant and delivery partner support functions.

In April 2020, due to a fall in food delivery and a rising demand for online grocery ordering amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the firm began delivering groceries and essentials under a service named Zomato Market in 80+ cities across India. In April 2020, Zomato introduced contactless dining at its partner restaurants. In May 2020, Zomato also began delivering alcohol in West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha after obtaining the permission of the governments in these states. In May 2020, Zomato further laid off 520 employees due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zomato closed operations of Zomato Market in June 2020 as demand for food delivery recovered and grocery delivery business "was not scalable". In April 2021, it pulled out of alcohol delivery service citing poor unit economics and scalability.

In July 2021, Zomato went public, opening its Initial public offering at a valuation of over 8 billion.

Zomato reentered grocery delivery space with a pilot launch in July 2021, allowing users to place orders from neighbourhood stores under a marketplace model. It shut down the service in September 2021.

In April 2022, Zomato launched a pilot of 10-minute food delivery in Gurgaon called Zomato Instant. In June 2022, Zomato announced the acquisition of quick-commerce company Blinkit for 568 million.

In August 2022, Zomato discontinued its pro membership, canceling new sign-ups and renewals. In addition, Zomato launched a new service in Gurgaon and South Delhi called Intercity Legends that allows users to order dishes from famous restaurants in other cities and have them delivered to their doorstep in a few days. In November 2022, Zomato introduced Zomato Pay feature, which allowed users to make payments at partner restaurants and avail offers, and partner restaurants to promote themselves.

Investments

Between 2010 and 2013, Zomato raised approximately from Info Edge India, giving Info Edge India a 57.9% stake in Zomato. In November 2013, it raised an additional 37 million from Sequoia Capital and Info Edge India.

In November 2014, Zomato completed another round of funding of 60 million at a post-money valuation of ~US$660 million. This round of funding was being led jointly by Info Edge India and Vy Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital.

While in April 2015, Info Edge India, Vy Capital and Sequoia Capital led another round of funding for 50 million. This was followed by another 60 million funding led by Temasek, a Singapore government-owned investment company, along with Vy Capital in September.

In October 2018, it raised $210 million from Alibaba's payment affiliate Ant Financial, which received an ownership stake of over 10% of the company as part of the round, which valued Zomato at around $2 billion. Zomato had also raised an additional $150 million from Ant Financial earlier in 2018.

In September 2020, Zomato raised $62 million from Temasek, after previously committed capitol from Ant Financial never came through.

In October 2020, as part of a Series J round of funding, Zomato raised $52 million from Kora, a US-based Investment firm.

In February 2021, Zomato raised 250 million from five investors, including Tiger Global Management, at a valuation of 5.4 billion.

Acquisitions

Zomato has acquired 12 startups globally.
* In July 2014, Zomato made its first acquisition by buying Menu-mania for an undisclosed sum.
* The company pursued other acquisitions including lunchtime.cz and obedovat.sk for a combined 3.25 million.
* In September 2014, it acquired Poland-based restaurant search service Gastronauci for an undisclosed sum.
* In December 2014, it acquired Italian restaurant search service Cibando.
* It acquired Seattle-based food portal, Urbanspoon, for an estimated US$60 million in 2015.
* Other acquisitions of 2015 include Mekanist in an all-cash deal, the Delhi-based startup MapleGraph that built MaplePOS (renamed Zomato Base), and NexTable, a US-based table reservation and restaurant management platform.
* In 2016, it acquired Sparse Labs, a logistics technology startup, and the food delivery startup, Runnr, in 2017 (renamed from Roadrunnr when it acquired TinyOwl in 2016).
* In September 2018, it acquired Bengaluru-based food e-marketplace, TongueStun Food, for about US$18 million in a cash and stock deal.
* In December 2018, it acquired a Lucknow-based startup, TechEagle Innovations, that works exclusively on drones, for an undisclosed amount. Zomato claimed that the acquisition will help pave the way towards drone-based food delivery in India, building technology aimed at a hub-to-hub delivery network.
* On 21 January 2020, Zomato acquired its rival Uber Eats' business in India in an all stock deal, giving Uber Eats 10% of the combined business.
*On 29 June 2021, the firm signed a deal with Grofers to invest nearly US$120 million in the online grocery firm by acquiring 9.3% stakes of the company.
*On 24 June 2022, Zomato acquired Blinkit for US$568 million in an all-stock deal.

Security breaches

On 4 June 2015, an Indian security researcher hacked the Zomato website and gained access to information about 62.5 million users. Using the vulnerability, he was able to access the personal data of users such as telephone numbers, email addresses, and Instagram private photos using their Instagram access token. Zomato fixed the issue within 48 hours of it becoming apparent. On 15 October 2015, Zomato changed business strategies from a Full-Stack market to an Enterprise market. This led Zomato to reduce its workforce by 10%, or around 300 people.

On 18 May 2017, a security blog called HackRead claimed that over 17 million Zomato user records including emails and password hashes had been stolen due to a security breach. The company stated that no payment information or credit card details were stolen. The hacker removed the stolen user data from the dark web after Zomato agreed to start a bug bounty program.

Feeding India

Started in 2014 by Ankit Kawatra, Feeding India is a nonprofit organisation which serves free meals to underprivileged people with the help of volunteers. Feeding India was acquired by Zomato in July 2019. In May 2022, Zomato claimed that Feeding India was serving over 200,000 meals every day under its Daily Feeding Program.

Finance

Controversies

"Food has no religion" tweet

In July 2019, Zomato received a customer complaint that he was assigned a non-Hindu delivery boy for his food order in Jabalpur and had asked Zomato to provide a Hindu delivery boy. The customer alleged that Zomato had refused to change the rider after which he asked to cancel the order. The customer then posted this incident on Twitter, after which Zomato responded to the message stating: "Food doesn't have a religion. It is a religion." The company's response received positive comments on Twitter, but some customers questioned the use of Jain food and halal tags on food items. According to the company, such tags are placed by individual restaurant owners, and not by Zomato.

Logout campaign

On 17 August 2019, more than 1,200 restaurants logged off from Zomato because of their offer of discount programmes at dine-in restaurants. In Pune alone, more than 450 restaurants stopped serving to Zomato Gold because of aggressive discounts and loss of business. Its premium subscription-based dining out service Zomato Gold had 6,500 restaurants partners and a total of 1.1 million subscribers in India as of August 2019. As part of the campaign, around 2,500 restaurants logged out from the Zomato Gold service. After Zomato made some changes, National Restaurant Association of India still refused to accept the modified version of the plan, saying that the corrective measures would not resolve the key issue of deep discounts. However, Zomato founder Goyal admitted mistake, became ready to rectify it and called for sanity and truce. He also urged restaurants to stop #Logout campaign.

2021 delivery partner assault accusation

In March 2021, a video was posted on Instagram by a Bengaluru-based model Hitesha Chandranee accusing Zomato delivery person of assaulting and punching her as she refused to pay money for the food he delivered. She claimed he delivered her food very late and they both argued and had a verbal duel and then the delivery executive hit her on the nose and escaped. Hitesha then shot a video with a bleeding nose and recalled entire incident and posted it on Instagram on March 9. After the post went viral, Bengaluru police then arrested the Zomato delivery executive named Kamraj and booked him for assaulting Hitesha. Zomato temporarily suspended Kamraj and paid for Hitesha's treatment and legal charges for Kamraj. Kamraj denied the allegations and revealed that it was the girl who assaulted and abused him and her nose got hurt by her own ring amidst the scuffle. After hearing Kamraj's story and seeing inconsistencies between Hitesha's accusations and her statements, people started tweeting and campaigning in support of Kamraj. Kamraj later lodged an FIR against Hitesha in Electronic city Police Station, and she was charged with wrongful restraint, assault, intentional insult, and criminal intimidation. Hitesha left Bengaluru and did not appear before Police.

Currently, police has stopped the investigation as they did not find any evidence in the case.

"Hindi is our National Language" Controversy

On 19 October 2021, #Reject_Zomato trended on Twitter after a Zomato chat support executive asked a customer based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu to learn Hindi, falsely claiming that it was India's national language. The founder and CEO of the company, Deepinder Goyal, posted a public apology on Twitter but also said in a later post, "The level of tolerance and chill in our country needs to be way higher than it is nowadays", which further angered Tamil netizens.

References

External links

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{{Online food ordering

Websites about food and drink
Online retailers of India
Companies based in Gurgaon
Indian companies established in 2008
Retail companies established in 2008
Transport companies established in 2008
Internet properties established in 2008
Online food ordering
IOS software
Android (operating system) software
Universal Windows Platform apps
2008 establishments in Haryana
Food- and drink-related organizations
Companies listed on the National Stock Exchange of India
Companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange
2021 initial public offerings
Cybercrime in India