Zomato, South Africa’s most exhaustive online restaurant guide, has expanded its presence in the country with the launch of its operations in Durban. Covering over 500 restaurants in the city, Zomato is available across web and mobile (Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry).
Coinciding with this is the announcement of Zomato’s latest round of funding. Marking the largest ever investment made in the restaurant discovery space, Zomato has received USD 37 million in funding from global venture capitalists Sequoia Capital, and Info Edge. The funds will be used to drive Zomato’s aggressive international expansion plans, for further product developments, and to scale up team sizes globally.
Zomato forayed into South Africa with the launch of its Johannesburg operations in April, followed by Cape Town in July and Pretoria in September. Covering over 5,000 restaurants in South Africa, Zomato provides key information such as menus, photographs, contact details, geocoded maps, and user ratings and reviews, making it the most comprehensive restaurant discovery platform in the country.
On mobile, Zomato’s app uses interactive, location-based technology to suggest the best restaurants around a user’s physical location, according to his or her preferences. With over 15 million visitors per month globally between its web and mobile site, Zomato also offers effective, targeted advertising options for local restaurants and bars that wish to increase their overall market reach.
Over time, Zomato has introduced some significant changes to the website and mobile apps in order to improve the user experience:
● Social features: The only social network in the restaurant discovery space, Zomato has a host of features to create a social experience. Users can follow one another, upload photos to restaurant pages, comment and vote on photos and reviews, and communicate via direct messages to plan get-togethers or share their experiences.
● Photo uploads: A feature that is now available on Zomato’s iOS, Android, and Windows Phone app, allows users to click and upload photographs using their smartphones. An additional feature is the option to add filters and restaurant tags to their photos.
● Multilingual support: Zomato’s website and mobile apps will now also be available in Bahasa Indonesia, Turkish, and Portuguese, to increase the usability for users in Indonesia, Turkey, and Brazil respectively. Zomato also announced today the launch of their services in Brazil (São Paulo), Turkey (Istanbul, Ankara), Indonesia (Jakarta) and the expansion of their presence in the United Kingdom (Glasgow, Edinburgh).
Deepinder Goyal, CEO and Founder of Zomato said, “This is an exciting growth phase for us. The latest round of funding gives us the muscle we require to take Zomato to new shores, power product development, and build our team strength across all the cities and countries we’re in at present.”
Pooja Khanna, CEO of Zomato South Africa said, “South Africa is witnessing great growth in web and mobile usage. Zomato will give these users instant access to in-depth information on restaurants while allowing the users to interact with each other over their shared love of food”
