Web- and smartphone-based restaurant listing and review service Zomato has raised US$37m (about R370m) in fresh investment from Sequoia Capital and existing investor Info Edge as it eyes expansion in South Africa and other emerging markets.
Zomato had previously raised $16,5m in funding from Info Edge over four separate capital-raising exercises.
The company, whose services were launched in Johannesburg in April, and which began offering them in Cape Town and Pretoria recently, has now also expanded to South Africa’s third-largest city, Durban.
The company, founded and headquartered in India, is also opening its restaurant guide in São Paulo (Brazil), Jakarta (Indonesia), and Istanbul and Ankara (Turkey).
Zomato began life as Foodiebay.com and was founded in Delhi by Indian Institute of Technology graduate Deepinder Goyal. It also has operations in India, the Philippines, Qatar, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates and the UK.
Zomato offers access to its service via mobile applications — available for all the major platforms — and via its website.
In Durban, the company is covering 500 restaurants at launch, bringing the South African total to more than 5 000 and offering diners and prospective diners access to menus, photographs, contact details, geo-coded maps, and user ratings and reviews. It updates menu cards every three months across all restaurants.
Worldwide, it has information on 160 000 restaurants in 11 countries.
Diners can post reviews, but these are vetted for abusive language and moderated for usefulness. This is done within 24 hours. When reviews are rejected, diners are notified why.
The company makes money by serving geo-targeted banner advertisements to users of its website. These ads are sold to restaurants with guarantees that they’ll only be served to people in or around the area the restaurant is located.
In the next 24 months, Zomato wants to expand to 22 additional countries in Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia, North America and Latin America. — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media
