Thursday, November 20, 2014

Zomato raises $60 million at a post money valuation of $660 million


Zomato, the online restaurant search and discovery service from India that has gone on to achieve global success 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

Co-founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah bac in 2008 as FoodieBay, the company rebranded to Zomato and has come a long way now. At this point, Zomato provides up-to-date detailed information, menus and photos for over 300,000 restaurants across the 18 countries.

Zomato has already acquired companies in New Zealand, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland to increase its presence quickly. 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. Apart from the site, Zomato has big mobile push and for which it has well designed applications. 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 quick facts about Zomato’s scale:
  • Zomato 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.
  • Zomato claims a 300% growth in revenue compared to last year.
  • Zomato has acquired 4 companies in the recent past. Over the next year, Zomato plans to expand to 14 more countries across Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Americas.
  • Zomato recently rebranded
Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato, said
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.”

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