What is Zomato? There is only one thing people like more than eating food, and that is making sure they are eating the best food possible. That is why restaurant review websites such as Yelp and UrbanSpoon have flourished. India is no different. But it appears Zomato, its most popular restaurant discovery site, has an appetite bigger than the South Asian nation of more than 1 billion.
Zomato started as Foodiebay in 2008 (but decided to change the name as not to be confused with eBay). At first, it marketed itself as a restaurant and events website, but soon dropped the events aspect to focus on food full time. In short, Zomato is a “restaurant discovery” website, meaning it has listings for restaurants across a city along with a rating and categorization system. It relies less on the social aspect of restaurant reviewing; it works with restaurants and its own team of researchers to ensure menu and hours-of-operation information are up to date. Users can find restaurants, leave reviews, rate a restaurant, and keep their own restaurant diary to share with friends.
Why will it beat Yelp? Currently, Zomato is at a fraction of the revenue of Yelp ($6 million in revenue compared to Yelp’s $232 million last year), but it has some serious ambition. Though four years younger than Yelp, it operates in 19 countries that tend to be developing economies (as opposed to Yelp, which operates in 23 countries though they are mostly developed nations), hitting nascent markets as they grow. Though it is overwhelmingly popular in its home country India, in the past year it has gobbled up foodie websites across the world, including in the Czech Republic, Poland, New Zealand, and Italy. In January 2015, it announced it bought Seattle-based UrbanSpoon. Zomato hopes its more carefully curated content will be enough to satiate appetites even outside its native land.
