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Zomato is a company from the online food ordering sector, which helps you connect with various restaurants and order food online.
It is a mobile application and you can also find it online using web portals. It helps you order snacks and food from your favourite restaurants and also uses your nearest restaurants and food hubs.
Zomato helps you connect with the various restaurants located nearby. You just have to open Zomato and search for the food you want to order.
Zomato gives you the exact details of the nearest restaurants and also how much time they will deliver the food to your place.
It gives you various coupons to apply to your order and avail various discounts, some discounts are offered by the restaurants and some are offered by the Zomato app.
There are times when you are very tired and neither have the time nor the energy to make food or go out and have food, the best alternative to this situation is to order food from your favourite restaurant using the Zomato app. It is available on android, ios
About Zomato
In India, the headquarters of Zomato is located in the city of Gurgaon in Haryana State. It falls under the service sector where you can order your food online through this website and app.
Zomato was founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, it was launched in the year 2010 and he is currently the CEO of Zomato. The total funding of Zomato has reached 2.1 billion over the 21 rounds.
The Parent organisation of Zomato is Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd. The current valuation of Zomato is 8 billion. The current revenue of Zomato increased by the rate of 82% to 1,112 crores; earlier it had a rate of 609.4 crores.
The restaurant may or may not give discounts if directly ordered from their website. If you order using the Zomato app, it surely has a lot of discounts and offers for you to avail yourself of.
You can also order food by sitting far away from your near and dear ones. There are times when you can personally not visit them and you want to surprise them.
You can order some sweets, chocolates, ice creams, cakes, or any other form of the sweet gesture, by sitting at your home and order this at their place with some personalised messages on it, and also the gift wrappings on it.
Zomato is a trusted partner and never disappoints its customers due to any reason. You can always trust the quality of the food.
Zomato Founders and Team
Zomato Created By - Pankaj Chaddah, Gaurav Gupta, and Deepinder Goyal in 2008 and launched Zomato in 2010.
Deepinder Goyal
Deepinder Goyal graduated with a computing and mathematics degree from IIT in New Delhi in the year 2005 and belongs from the city of Muktsar in the state of Punjab, he is the CEO of Zomato.
He used to work in a company in New Delhi named Bain and Company as a Senior Associate Consultant.While working there, Deepinder got an idea for his own start-up which would be related to the online information services associated with the restaurants, when he noticed the demand for the menu cards amongst his working fellows.
Deepinder Goyal resigned from his company in 2008 for his Zomato start-up and followed the product development and the strategies which would work to develop his idea.
He researched the market and also the interest of people. This was a great system started by him and his team as it eased the food-related issues.
The bachelors who live away from their family and the families often are not able to go out for dinners and lunches due to time and comfort issues.
Pankaj Chaddah
Pankaj Chaddah was a friend and colleague of Deepinder Goyal in the company he worked in New Delhi, Bain and Company. He worked for approximately 2 and a half years before joining Deepinder in the Zomato start-up.
He was a Mechanical Engineering B.Tech graduate student from IIT in Delhi. He resigned from his designation of Co-Founder of Zomato in the year 2018, after almost 10 years of serving Zomato.
Pankaj Chaddah is currently serving as the Co-Founder of Shyft which was earlier known as Mindhouse, where he joined in the month of November in the year 2019.
Gaurav Gupta
Gaurav Gupta initially joined the department of Advertising Sales in Zomato as Global Head and COO and was given promotion as the Co-Founder, he later resigned on 14 of September month in the year 2021. He led a food tech supply company.
Zomato History
Zomato was launched in 2008 as FoodieBay and was later renamed Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd. on January 18 in the year 2010.
All of it began when the founders, Pankaj Chaddah and Deepinder Goyal, were sitting in their New Delhi office named Bain and Company and noticed a large number of people waiting in line for a flash of the menu card.
It was at that precise moment when the idea of finding a way out to resolve the long waiting lines was developed in this duo's minds, leading to the launch of Zomato.
Zomato turns 13 in the month of July in 2021, and the company will commemorate the occasion on 10 July 2021.Check out the short video on Zomatos’ history.
Do you want to know how they started with their plan? The soft copies of their menu cards were published on their web portal.
As a result, everyone in their office began to use it, resulting in significant time savings for them. This resulted in their website seeing a surge in traffic, and they soon expanded to all the people who lived in the city.
Zomato Start-up Story
Zomato’s start-up was the plan of two colleagues who used to work in the same office who one day noticed the people who were waiting in long lines and queues for a long time for acquiring the menu cards to order food.
Both the colleagues decided to start a website through which people can save their time by not standing in lines and queues to wait for their turn to order food.
They initially started this start-up in Delhi, and later the services offered by them started to expand in cities like Kolkata and Mumbai.
So, this is the Zomato Startup Story - which makes India's best food delivery app.
Zomato Name, Tagline, and Logo
The former name of Zomato was Foodiebay, but the founders later changed it to Zomato as it was easy to remember, was prominent, and also to avoid confusion with the eBay Website.
The Zomato Tagline is “Never have a bad meal”
Zomato Business Model
Zomato operates on the basis of a commission-based business model. The Zomato Business Model’s main source of revenue is from advertisements on various platforms such as music app ads, hoardings, video ads, movie ads, and television ads.
The adverts channel that Zomato gives to display is currently the portal's primary source of revenue. The majority of its earnings come from this, followed by commissions charged to eateries.
The business model is also known as the revenue model. The Business Model is completely based on giving complete information on the restaurants and the dishes they offer to their customers.
Zomato Challenges Encountered
The most difficult challenge in Zomato's path was figuring out how to introduce their app in all the restaurants in the areas located in the major cities so that the customers who are relying on them don’t lose out on the best restaurants and food hubs in the area.
Since the initiative's inception, this achievement has been general and continues to motivate significant efforts on the part of the endeavour.
The Zomato partners worked hard and solved this challenge of not being able to reach out to the people in the initial stage of the start-up and reached out to people through various online platforms.
Zomato Competitors
Despite its dominance in the business, Zomato faces a lot of indirect and direct competition. Swiggy is a direct competitor for Zomato, and at times it also back faced Zomato but Zomato overcame Swiggy’s challenges, there are other competitors as well such as:
Postmates
DoorDash
Grubhub Inc.
Chownow
UberEats
Deliveroo
Zomato Funding and Investors
So, below we have discussed about zomato funding history which you should must read.
Zomato has raised about $2.1 billion in venture capital to date. To date investors such as Kora, Tiger Global, and Fidelity led a $250 million round of investment for Zomato recently.
The company Zomato is valued at $5.4 billion. Kora invested $115 million, Fidelity $55 million, and Tiger Global $50 million in this round.
The $660 million round headed by Tiger Global and Kora Management, as well as the $250 million round headed by similar investors, with Fidelity and other investors joining them, are amongst two of Zomato's most recent funding rounds.
The previous major investment round preceding these rounds was a $210 million round led by Ant Financial in October 2018.
Chinese investors and Alibaba have aided the expansion of food tech businesses in India, where Chinese giants such as Alipay, Ant Financials, and others have backed Zomato and its rival Swiggy. Zomato received Rs 4,196 crores of the funds from the marquee investors as part of the book allocation of the anchor.
Zomato is a publicly-traded company and it has long-term goals in the funding round. With a stake of approximately 18.4 percent in Zomato, Info Edge India is the company's largest stakeholder.
Earlier when Zomato was set up there were no funds and investors but with time they gained the trust in the market and also had a name in the market when they became famous amongst the people the investors started contacting them and they had the funding and investors investing in their company and start-up.
Zomato Partnerships
Zomato was always open to partnerships to have a name in the market and to provide the best services to its customers, and today it’s one of the best online food delivery apps due to the help and support of its partners and customers.
Since its inception in 2008, Zomato has formed numerous relationships with a wide spectrum of international and national businesses, including fintech firms, cafes, restaurants, and others. Some of Zomato's most well-known partnerships include:
On February 5, 2021, Zomato collaborated with the Indian government on a street food project.
On March 2, 2020, Zomato announced a partnership with RBL Bank to introduce the "Edition Credit card," which is powered by the Mastercard.
On December 21, 2020, Zomato partnered with InCred to offer credit to restaurant partners.
On January 18, 2019, the company announced a partnership with Paytm in India to boost its online meal ordering business.
On October 21, 2019, BioD Energy and Zomato teamed up to help reduce cooking oil waste in India.
Zomato Future Growth Plans
After discontinuing most of its overseas operations, Zomato is currently focusing on its Indian meal delivery company. Zomato is expected to grow at a 40 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the coming years.
Deepinder Goyal is optimistic that he would be able to figure out the best technique to deliver food in 10 minutes and use it to expand. As of now, in the year 2022, Zomato Instant is only being tested in a single location.
Deepinder Goyal constantly tries to reach out to the problems faced by their customers so that he can personally solve the queries and make Zomato the best food ordering app.
He faced a lot of challenges and hardships all this while but he didn’t stop working hard or never broke down and this was the main reason Zomato is one of the best online food ordering apps in the market right now.
Zomato Awards and Achievements
Over the years, Zomato has received a slew of important honours. In the Economic Times the award for the Startups in the seventh edition, the food tech behemoth took home top prizes, including the Startup of the Year title for 2021.
Zomato became the honoured company and Deepinder Goyal proudly accepted the award. It was a matter of immense happiness for him as a person who just started this service to avoid long waiting times for the menu flashcards.
Zomato Mergers and Acquisitions
Zomato has acquired approximately 15 businesses throughout its nearly 12-year history. Blinkit, formerly known as Grofers, was acquired by Zomato in a $725 million agreement on March 16, 2022. On January 20, 2021, it paid more than Rs 80 crore for FITSO.
One of the company's most notable acquisitions is UberEats in India, which was completed on January 21, 2020. For $350 million, Zomato bought Uber Eats India.
Zomato gained access to the Uber Eats network, which included over 70 thousand active partners for delivery. According to a filing with the Competition Commission of India, Zomato first announced that it would be acquiring roughly 9.3 percent of Grofers.
Despite the fact that this was a modest interest, the corporation was considering acquiring Grofers in the long run, according to some insiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) approved the Zomato-blinkit formerly known as Grofers agreement via a tweet dated August 13, 2021, in which the former company will acquire 9.3 percent stakes in Grofers now known as blinkit.
However, since pivoting, blinkit had lost its unicorn status and was experiencing financial difficulties until Zomato saw fit to assist blinkit. This is why, on March 16, 2022, Zomato gave Blinkit a $150 million loan.
The two businesses sought a merger soon after, which arrived in the form of an all-stock agreement that valued grofers at $725 million. Last year, Zomato spent almost $100 million for a 10% interest in the company.
Zomato has joined Swiggy, Instamart, and Zepto in the big league of rapid commerce after acquiring Blinkit, a huge acquisition. It was apparent in its announcement last month that it is bullish in the rapid commerce category.
According to reports, Zomato and Swiggy, a Bengaluru-based competitor, are in negotiations to join. Swiggy wants to buy Zomato's online food delivery operation, while Zomato has apparently proposed a stock-based merger.
Zomato Investment
To date, Zomato has made 15 investments. The food tech unicorn's most recent investment was believed to be in the Series B round of Urban Piper, where the founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal headed the online food delivery business and invested $24 million in the other startup.
Zomato's prior investment in blinkit, which is made on March 15, 2022, was worth $150 million. On March 16, 2022, the board of the food tech unicorn approved the purchase of 16.66 percent of Mukunda Foods, a robotics business, and kitchen automation, for $5 million.
The acquisition of Mukunda, a food robots business created in 2012, will allow Zomato to assist restaurants in becoming more productive with a cheaper cost of staff, as well as cut wastage and expand the kitchen throughout.
On January 28, 2022, it also invested in the ad tech firm Adonmo Pvt Ltd and the UrbanPiper Technology company, a B2B software platform. Since then, the Gurugram based online food delivery company has invested $5 million in UrbanPiper and $15 million in Adonmo.
Zomato raised $210 million in October 2018 from Alipay Singapore Holdings Pte Ltd, an offshoot of Alibaba's payment company Ant Financial Services.
Ant Financial Services obtained a stake in Zomato worth approximately 14.7 percent as part of this financing round. According to news dated February 3, 2022.
Zomato Co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal, who first invested in the Grofers in 2015, sold the stocks to Tiger Global before the company went public.
In June 2021, the Gurugram-based online food company re-invested in Blinkit. In 11 years, a Zomato angel investor's investment of Rs 10,000 turned Rs 224 crore.
Since Zomato made a firm announcement on the IPO timeframe, there has been a lot of enthusiasm in the startup sector as well as the stock market. This is the first of a series of IPOs from India's new-generation startups.
Zomato Zomaland
Zomato Zomaland is the Greatest entertainment and food carnival in India, which gathers all the top musicians, dancers, eateries, comedians, DJs, carnival games, and interesting instalments.
It can also be addressed as the offline Zomato, just like Zomato brings all the best restaurants together in an app the same way Zomaland brings all the entertainment and food together at a place in the form of a fest and also brings smiles to the face of every individual who attends the festival.
Zomato's signature event. Over 100,000 people attended the first edition of this carnival in 2018, which took place in Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai.
It has since expanded to over ten locations, partnering with prominent businesses such as the Singapore Board of Tourism.
Zomato ESOPs
According to sources, Zomato will be placed on the Indian stock exchange on July 23, 2021.
On 22 July 2021, Thursday, the firm distributed its shares, with Zomato co-founder Deepinder Goyal receiving the biggest ESOPs for INR 2,800 crores, as well as owning over 5% of Zomato independently.
Ankit Kawatra, the founder of the non-profit Feeding India, came in second with ESOPs of INR 628 crores. Mohit Gupta, Gunjan Patidar, and Gaurav Gupta came in second, third, and fourth, respectively, with INR 208, INR 202, and INR 156 crores.
Deepinder Goyal, the founder, and CEO of Zomato has announced that he will donate the whole proceeds of his last vested ESOP, valued at INR 700 crore, to the Future Foundation of Zomato.
Conclusion
Zomato is an online food ordering and delivery company, founded by Deepinder Goyal. You can order food online through the mobile application or the official website of the company.
It helps you order your favourite food from your favourite restaurant and delivers it through their Zomato delivery partners.It is also bringing a new future foundation of delivering the ordered food within 10 minutes, which will attract lots of new customers to the application.
Zomato is one of the leading companies in this sector. It currently has lots of mergers and investors, and also it has significantly raised the funding of the company.
I hope you liked our article on about Zomato , if you have any comments or suggestions do share them in the comments below.
FAQs
Q1. What is the story behind Zomato?
Zomato’s start-up was the plan of two colleagues who used to work in the same office who one day noticed the people who were waiting in long lines and queues for a long time for acquiring the menu cards to order food.
Both the colleagues decided to start a website through which people can save their time by not standing in lines and that was Zomato.
Q2. When did Zomato become successful?
Zomato was founded in the year 2008, and it was launched in the year 2010 after the people started knowing the company in the market, people started ordering food online and then Zomato started gaining popularity and with time it became successful.
It became one of the best online food ordering apps.
Q3. Did Zomato ever make a profit?
The previous major profit round preceding these rounds was a $210 million round led by Ant Financial in October 2018. Zomato is expected to grow at a 40 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the coming years.
According to sources, Zomato will be placed on the Indian stock exchange on July 23, 2021.
Q4. Who is the CEO of Zomato?
Deepinder Goyal graduated with a computing and mathematics degree from IIT in New Delhi in the year 2005 and belongs from the city of Muktsar in the state of Punjab, he is the CEO of Zomato.
He used to work in a company in New Delhi named Bain and Company as a Consultant of Management.