Foodtech Unicorn Zomato Hits 28 Mn Monthly Order Run Rate In Dec

Gurugram-headquartered food delivery and restaurant discovery platform Zomato claims to have achieved 28 Mn in monthly order run rate as of December 2018, up from the 21 Mn monthly orders it claimed in October 2018.

It is to be noted that order run rate is not the absolute order volume for the foodtech unicorn. The run rate is a quick way of “annualising” data that is from a shorter period of time, such as a quarter or month.

At the same time, Zomato’s arch rival, Swiggy, is said to have clocked in 28 Mn monthly orders in absolute terms.

The two major players in the foodtech industry have been continuously chasing a larger piece of the market and have been experimenting with their services buckets as they look to outdo each other to get ahead in the race.

Zomato also said that its dine-in subscription service Zomato Gold had 700K members and over 6,000 restaurant partners, while its reward programme Piggybank had 1.5 Mn subscribers, as of December 2018.

Zomato Sneakpeek, which was launched in August last year to help users learn about restaurants, saw users spending 59,471,997 seconds, equivalent to almost 2 years, on the platform. According to the company, it registered the maximum orders from Delhi-NCR among the Tier I cities and Ahmedabad, among the tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

The Foodtech War

The foodtech unicorn, which is now in 120 cities, is gearing up to raise $500 Mn-$1 Bn in fresh funding to challenge Swiggy. Zomato recorded $1Bn in annual gross merchandise value with a 40% growth in its revenue for FY18 and targeted expansion to 100 cities across India.

In December, Zomato faced the ire of social media when a video of one of its delivery executives on a bike eating out of food packets meant for delivery went viral. The company did its best to control the social media uproar, announced plans to launch tamper-proof tapes on its food boxes, and fired the delivery person.

Swiggy ended 2018 in high spirits, having entered the unicorn club earlier in June and ending the year with a $1 Bn funding round led by Naspers. The company posted a 220% jump in revenue for FY18, launched a slew of new offerings, including Swiggy Super, Scheduled, Access, long-distance deliveries, and Capital Assist.

One of the biggest investors of Swiggy, Naspers Ventures’ CEO Larry Illg had said that “in September in the India market, Swiggy was about 36% larger than the next competitor in terms of order numbers and had a higher AOV that pegs Swiggy at roughly 64% ahead in GMV.”

“In terms of NMV (net merchandise value), Swiggy is 80%, or 1.7-1.8 times, the next competitor,” he claimed.

Swiggy and Zomato are facing increasing competition from UberEATS and Foodpanda. However, the bigger trouble brewing for the companies this year is the ire of small to mid-size restaurant owners who have filed a petition to the Competition Commission of India and the Prime Minister’s Office alleging “misuse of dominant position by food delivery companies, including Swiggy, Zomato, UberEATS and Foodpanda.”

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