Zomato Reaffirms Its Commitment To India, Expands Operations To 25 New Cities

Zomato has launched its restaurant reviews and rating platform across 25 new cities in India.

It’s services would now also be available in Trivandrum, Vijayawada, Raipur, Madurai, Jodhpur, Thrissur, Ajmer, Manali, Alappuzha, Gorakhpur, Ooty, Kota, Manipal, Dharamshala, Jammu, Haridwar, Jalandhar, Rishikesh, Mussoorie, Udupi, Cuttack, Shimla, Palakkad, Pushkar, and Srinagar.

The move reaffirms the importance of India for the foodtech company. Commenting on the development, Oytun Calapover, global head, Listings Business, Zomato, said, “India continues to be our highest-priority market and we will continue to expand and build further depth within the country. We are doing everything to take Zomato to more cities to enable the growth of the restaurant industry and help our audience make better food choices.”

The company has now expanded its presence to 63 cities in India and plans to continue to launch in multiple new cities every month. It offers its online food delivery service in 17 Indian cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.

The development comes soon after the reports of Zomato raising a $400 Mn funding round surfaced last week.

Zomato’s Efforts To Bite A Big Slice Of Indian Foodtech Pie

Since its comeback after the winter of 2016, Zomato has left no stone unturned to woo customers as well as partner restaurants. Recently, Zomato added a new feature on its app that allows customers to give a ‘tip’ to delivery executives.

After raising $200 Mn funding from Alibaba’s Ant Financial in February 2018, Zomato worked hard to improve its user metrics and by May this year, the company claimed a huge jump in the number of users on its platform.

Between October and December last year, Zomato launched a slew of new initiatives to gain a stronghold in the online food delivery space against rival Swiggy. Among these were its #MissionGiveBack programme, which waived off table reservation fees for restaurant partners globally, and Project Fairplay, which was geared towards curbing malpractices.

Zomato also reported that it had seen a 45% year-on-year growth on a revenue of $74 Mn in FY 18. The company is also aggressively focussing on its Zomato Gold service. The Gold subscription, launched in November last year, and priced at INR 1,899 for a year, has over 150K subscribers.

Foodtech Sector Still Hot In India

In a bid to expand to new markets, Zomato’s arch foodtech rival Swiggy raised $210 Mn in a Series G funding last week. The startup aims to double its technology headcount to build solutions for robust operations, deep personalisation, and connected supply chain systems.

Headquartered in Bengaluru, Swiggy has raised a total of $465 Mn in funding till date. By contrast, Zomato has secured around $444 Mn in funding so far.

Committing to a delivery time of 35 minutes and launching various discount offers to lure customers, UberEATS is also claiming a stake in the sector. Google is also looking to have a taste of the market with Google Areo.

The competition from global players has increased significantly, but Zomato and Swiggy are not ready to back even an inch. With Indian startups looking to continue their war for customer acquisition, the Indian foodtech sector is heating up and shows no signs of saturation yet.