Zomato Winds Up Subsidiary In Jordan

Listed foodtech major Zomato on Wednesday (March 15) said it has liquidated Zomato Ireland Limited – Jordan, a step-down subsidiary based in Jordan, as of March 12.

Zomato Jordan, as the company was called, did not have any active business, as disclosed by the company in its red herring prospectus in 2021, Zomato said in an exchange filing.

“It may be further noted that the closure of Zomato Jordan does not affect the turnover/revenue of the company,” the filing added.

Zomato Scaling Back

The development comes more than a month after the listed foodtech major said it will be shutting operations in the Philippines and Indonesia.

The Philippines was the first operation of Zomato in Southeast Asia, having launched in the island nation a decade ago in April 2013, around the same time as its launch in Indonesia. In early February, Zomato’s websites for both countries started displaying a message stating that the foodtech had shut operations there.

Reportedly, the foodtech giant decided to pull out of the two SEA countries after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the respective countries’ restaurant industries. Zomato also shut down its premium delivery service in the Philippines and Indonesia in 2020.

“It has been a great run but we have, sadly, stopped our operations here,” the message read, adding that users can explore delivery and dine-in options in India and the UAE.

However, Zomato’s red herring prospectus dated July 8, 2021, stated that both the Philippines and the Indonesia units did not have any active business as of the date of filing of the documents. 

Zomato now has active operations only in India and the UAE. In November 2022, Kuwaiti foodtech Talabat shut down Zomato’s food delivery unit in the UAE, which it acquired for a reported $172 Mn in 2019. Zomato said it would continue to offer restaurant discovery and dining-out services in the UAE.

The downscaling has also been going on in India, as Zomato recently said it pulled out of 225 cities in the country owing to poor performance.

In the company’s letter to the shareholders, Zomato CFO Akshant Goyal said, “Recently, in January, we have exited around 225 smaller cities which contributed 0.3% of our GOV (gross order value) in Q3FY23 (October-December).”

Goyal added, “Performance of these (225) cities was not very encouraging in the past few quarters and we did not feel the payback period on our investments in these cities was acceptable.”

The foodtech giant, which went public in July 2021, recorded a jump of 1.75X in its consolidated revenue to INR 1,948 Cr in the quarter ended December 31, 2022. At the same time, its loss skyrocketed 5X to INR 346.6 Cr. The figures included the financials of its quick commerce business Blinkit and B2B vertical Hyperpure.

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