- Zomato- India's most used food directory was originally launched under the name 'Foodiebay' in 2008 zomato
- The founders were Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. Both are IIT Delhi graduates
- It started with a simple foundational idea- an internet directory for restaurant menus.
- At some point Soon there was a severe lack of HR and business, which kept Foodlet struggling. This is when Pankaj Chaddah stepped in to help Deepinder's idea, and they began afresh by starting FoodieBay. Deepinder describes Pankaj as a “turning point for the company".
JOURNY OF ZOMATO IN INDIA
Turnover
- Between 2010 and 2013, Zomato received its biggest funding of approximately USD 16.7 million (INR 167, 000, 00) from "Info Edge India". This gave them a 57.9% stake in the company
- In the November 2013, another lucky round of funding got a new investor to pitch in- Sequoia Capital. They with Info Edge took the total sum of that round to USD 37 million.
- The total funding of Zomato by the beginning of 2015, was a promising USD 113 million.
Growth
- By 2011 the company after establishing a monopoly in Delhi NCR moved to cities like Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Ahmadabad.
- It kept pace with the smartphone boom too, by introducing its mobile app at this point in time.
- By 2012, overseas operations of Zomato started operating in full gear with the UAE, Sri Lanka, Qatar, United Kingdom, Philippines, and South Africa becoming a part of its user base. In 2013, countries like Turkey, Brazil, and New Zealand were also added to the list.
- setback in the States happened when Zomato acquired Urbanspoon and rebranded the company as their own. This rebranding did not workout and the venture failed in a mammoth manner.
- The company has had its shares of ups and downs but has always emerged to survive. 2018 marks 10 eventful years of Zomato Media Pvt Ltd. and here is wishing them ten more.
Acquisitions
- Zomato has acquired 12 startups globally.
- In July 2014, Zomato made its first acquisition by buying Menu-mania for an undisclosed sum.
- The company pursued other acquisitions including Lunchtime.cz and obedovat.sk for a combined US$3.25 million.
- In September 2014, Zomato acquired Poland-based restaurant search service Gastronauci for an undisclosed sum.
- In December 2014, it acquired Italian restaurant search service Cibando.
- Zomato also acquired Seattle-based food portal, Urbanspoon, for an estimated $60 million in 2015.
- Other acquisitions of 2015 include Mekanist in an all-cash deal, the Delhi-based startup MapleGraph that built MaplePOS (renamed Zomato Base) and NexTable, a US-based table reservation and restaurant management platform.
- In 2016, the company acquired Sparse Labs, a logistics technology startup and the food delivery startup, Runnr, in 2017 (renamed from Roadrunnr when it acquired TinyOwl in 2016).
- In September 2018, Zomato acquired Bengaluru based food e-marketplace, TongueStun Food, for about $18 million in a cash and stock deal.
- In December 2018, Zomato acquired Lucknow-based startup, TechEagle Innovations, that works exclusively on drones, for an undisclosed amount. Zomato claimed that the acquisition will help pave the way towards drone-based food delivery in India, building technology aimed at a hub-to-hub delivery network.
- On 21st January, 2020, Zomato acquired its rival Uber Eats' business in India in an all stock deal, giving Uber Eats 10% of the combined business.
Security
On 4 June 2015, an Indian security researcher hacked the Zomato website and gained access to information about 62.5 million users. Using the vulnerability, he was able to access personal data of users such as telephone numbers, email addresses and Instagram private photos using their Instagram access token. Zomato fixed the issue within 48 hours of it becoming apparent. On 15 October 2015, Zomato changed business strategies from a Full-Stack market to an Enterprise market. This led Zomato to reduce its workforce by 10%, or around 300 people.
On 18 May 2017, a security blog called Hackread claimed over 17 million accounts had been breached. "The database includes emails and password hashes of Zomato users, while the price was set for the whole package is $1,001.43 (Bitcoins 0.5587). The vendor also shared a trove of sample data to prove it is legit", the Hackread's post said. Hackread claimed details of 17 million users had meanwhile been sold on the Dark Web. Zomato confirmed that names, email addresses and encrypted passwords were taken from its database. The company reassured affected customers that no payment information or credit card details were stolen.
Zomato said the security measures it uses to ensure the stolen passwords cannot be converted back into normal text, but it still urged users who use the same password on other services to change them. It also logged the affected users out of the app and reset their passwords. "So far, it looks like an internal (human) security breach - some employee's development account got compromised", the company said in a blog post but later, when Zomato contacted the hacker, they discovered a loophole in their security. The hacker removed the stolen content from Dark Web asking for a healthy bug bounty programme.
Controversies
"Food has no religion"
In July 2019, Zomato received a customer complaint that he was assigned a non-Hindu delivery boy for his food order in Jabalpur and had asked Zomato to provide a Hindu delivery boy. The customer alleged that Zomato had refused to change the rider after which he asked to cancel the order. The customer then posted this incident on Twitter, after which Zomato responded to the message stating: "Food doesn't have a religion. It is a religion."The tweet received mixed responses, and some Twitter users further criticised the company for using Jain and halal tags on food items. Zomato then issued a clarification that these tags were placed by restaurant owners and not by Zomato.
Logout campaign
On 17 August 2019, more than 1,200 restaurants logged off from Zomato because of their offer of discount programmes at dine-in restaurants. In Pune alone, more than 450 restaurants stopped serving to Zomato Gold because of aggressive discounts and loss of business. Its premium subscription-based dining out service Zomato Gold had 6,500 restaurants partners and a total of 1.1 million subscribers in India as of August 2019. As part of the campaign, around 2,500 restaurants logged out from the Zomato Gold service. After Zomato made some changes, National Restaurant Association of India still refused to accept the modified version of the plan, saying that the corrective measures would not resolve the key issue of deep discounts. However, Zomato founder Goyal admitted mistake, became ready to rectify it and called for sanity and truce. He also urged restaurants to stop #Logout campaign.
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