Foodtech Unicorn Zomato Crosses $1 Bn GMV With 23 Mn Orders In September’18

Gurugram-based restaurant search and food ordering platform Zomato has received 21 Mn monthly online food orders in India, and nearly 2 Mn orders over the phone in September, the CEO and founder Deepinder Goyal said in a blog post.

According to Goyal, Zomato received 3.5 Mn orders at the beginning of 2018.

Here’s the interesting numbers Goyal shared about Zomato:

• Witnessed more than tenfold growth in new user acquisition since January from 197K to 2.4 Mn
• Zomato has almost doubled its number of restaurants registered on its platform. It recorded a rise from 28K restaurants in January to 54K at present
• The company increased its delivery fleet from 5K at the beginning of this year which has now reached to 74K
• It also claimed that company’s annual GMV has crossed $1 Bn from $210 Mn in January, this year

Goyal also highlighted the company’s recent acquisition of Runnr and said, “A lot of the credit for this goes to our continued teamwork with Runnr. Our acquisition of Runnr and the ramp up of the fleet has made a massive difference to the legwork put into our food delivery business.

The company acquired Runnr in September 2017, which is an online platform that provides hyperlocal logistics services in order to improve the platform’s food delivery capacity.

Zomato’s Growth In India

Zomato was launched in 2008 by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. The platform has its presence in over 38 cities across India, and aims to launch its food delivery business in over 100 cities.

• Zomato has raised a total of $443.8 Mn funding in over 10 rounds since its inception, says Crunchbase report
• The startup raised $200 Mn in Series I funding round in February led by Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group, a sub-organisation of China-based Alibaba
• Till date, the foodtech unicorn has made 12 acquisitions. It recently acquired Bengaluru-based startup TongueStun Food for about $18 Mn, last month
• Other acquisitions include Delhi-based software company MapleGraph, and a tech-based logistics company Sparse Labs along with some global startups, including NexTable, Mekanist, Urbanspoon, Cibando, LunchTime, Obedovat, Menu Mania and gastronauci.pl
• Zomato is reportedly in talks to raise nearly $100 Mn from China-based travel-booking site Ctrip
• In FY2018, Zomato clocked a revenue of $74 Mn, as compared to $51 Mn in the previous fiscal.

Foodtech Space In India

With investment biggies like SoftBank, Tencent etc looking forward to make bigger bets in the foodtech unicorns — Zomato and Swiggy— the competition and the tension to be bigger is palpable.

This is further highlighted with April 2017 report of Netscribes which expects that the online food delivery market in India to grow by 34-36% over 2015 to 2020.

One of the biggest rival for Zomato, one of the new entrants of Unicorn club— Swiggy has been experimenting with its portfolio of services to further diversify and grow in its segment. The company is reportedly exploring B2B segment while digitalising office cafeteria, looking to go hyperlocal with medicines etc and also enabling easier and better use of its services for customers— with Access, POP, scheduled etc— and for drivers— with UPI payments, quick payments, rewards etc— and has continued to surge forward making its mark in the segment.

Also, cab aggregator Ola is back with the bang in foodtech segment as it revamped its acquisition Foodpanda. Under this the online food delivery app Foodpanda will be integrated in the cab-hailing app.

At the same time, Ola’s arch rival global cab aggregator Uber has also increased its bets on UberEATS as it looks to strengthen the presence in several cities across India.

Recently in August, UberEATS had announced the launch of its services in Tiruchirappalli, Surat, Nashik, Ludhiana and Mysore.

As the segment continues to multiply its growth with innovation coming for ease of customer and investors betting bigger on the foodtech companies, the pressure on Zomato gets bigger to keep challenging and keep up the state of being the market leader.