19th November, 2014: Zomato, the popular restaurant search and discovery service, today announced that it has closed a fresh round of funding of USD 60 million at a post-money valuation of USD ~660 million. These funds will be used to accelerate Zomato’s global expansion and new product development. This round of funding is being led jointly by Info Edge (India) Limited and Vy Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital. This takes Zomato’s total funding to over USD 113 million. Zomato has earlier raised USD 53 million from Info Edge (India) Limited and Sequoia Capital over multiple rounds of funding.
Zomato provides up-to-date detailed information, menus and photos for over 300,000 restaurants across the 18 countries it is present in. The company takes a content-focused approach to restaurant search, believing that menus, pictures and maps are as important as reviews when it comes to a customer deciding where to eat. Users can access all this information for free on Zomato’s website (available atwww.zomato.com), or on Zomato’s beautifully designed mobile apps for iOS, Android, or Windows Phone. Zomato’s mobile focus is also accompanied by the recently launched Zomato for Business application – an app built exclusively to help restaurant owners engage and attract more customers to their business.
Some facts about Zomato:
- Founded in 2008, Zomato is headquartered in New Delhi, India, and employs over 900 people across 100+ cities in 18 countries.
- Available on web and mobile, Zomato provides detailed restaurant information such as menus, contact details, pictures, geocoded maps, and user reviews, for ~300,000 restaurants.
- Zomato sees over 30 million visits across its web and mobile platforms every month. More than half of Zomato’s traffic is seen on its mobile apps, testimony to the fact that local search is moving to mobile very fast.
- Zomato’s monetisation trends are robust, with a 300% growth in revenue compared to last year.
- Zomato has acquired 4 companies in the recent past. These acquisitions include MenuMania in New Zealand, Lunchtime in the Czech Republic, Obedovat in Slovakia, and Gastronauci in Poland.
- Over the next year, Zomato plans to expand to 14 more countries across Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Americas.
Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato, said, “Zomato is well on its way to becoming the world’s local expert in dining out. In the past year, we have added eight countries and millions of new users to our foodie truck. From just restaurant discovery and menus, Zomato has now become a vast global community driven by social interactions. This is an exciting point in our journey, as we accelerate our way across the globe, and build a product that will continue to redefine the way people dine.”
Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder of Info Edge, said, “Our first investment in Zomato was made almost 4 years ago, and the team has shown phenomenal progress since then to build the Zomato that we know and use. The company is growing very fast, and we are proud to back them up to further grow the business – both inside and outside of India.”
Mohit Bhatnagar, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors, said, “Zomato is a global internet company that happens to be from India. It’s been fascinating to see how Deepinder has got founders from many countries to combine forces with Zomato by aligning their vision to a larger common goal. We are delighted that Deepinder once again chose to partner with Sequoia in this round of funding.”
Alexander Tamas, Founding Partner of Vy Capital, said, “Zomato is one of the first Internet companies out of India with a consumer product that is scaling on a global basis and a team that is executing extremely well against the opportunity. We look forward to being long-term partners of the company as it establishes itself among the global Internet leaders.”