Food app Zomato, has raised about Rs. 400.29 Cr ($60 Mn)million in a fresh round of funding led by Singapore investment company, Temasek, with participation from existing investor Vy Capital. It will use the investment to further grow of its new business verticals. This takes Zomato’s total funding to $ 225 million which comes from a close set of four investors – Info Edge, Sequoia India, Vy Capital, and now Temasek.
With such tie-ups, the company is looking forward to building one of the largest food-tech companies in the world.Zomato already has the added advantage in terms of app downloads and credible ratings. Soon they will integrate this with the ordering and if the experience is seamless, it will get them way ahead of competition in much lesser time. The challenge is to develop logistics and technology to serve the delivery platform.
The company had launched its online ordering services in the UAE and sooner to be expanded to Australia and South Africa. The company is also planning to launch its table reservations service Zomato Book, point-of-sale system Zomato Base and Whitelabel platform across geographies in over the next few months.The key feature on the platform is the ability for restaurants to launch custom-branded native mobile apps to help them connect with and engage their customers, and operate at internet scale.
Recently, Zomato made strategic investments in Gurgaon-based Pickingo, and Mumbai-based Grab, both hyper-local delivery players, to enable last-mile delivery for restaurants, including dine-in-only restaurants that do not otherwise deliver.
Founded in 2008, Zomato has in total raised close to $225 million from Info Edge, Sequoia India, Vy Capital, and Temasek. Zomato had raised Rs 310 crore in April from existing investors including Info Edge andSequoia Capital.Over the past year, Zomatoacquired seven restaurant search players in New Zealand, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Turkey and Italy. Zomato is headquartered in India, and employs over 3,000 people across 22 countries. Available on web and mobile, it provides detailed restaurant information such as menus, contact details, pictures, geocoded maps, and user reviews, for 1.4 million restaurants. Zomato sees over 90 million visits across its web and mobile platforms every month.