INTRODUCTION

Zomato, an online restaurant discovery platform where customers can

restaurants in a particular area, their menu, place order and pay online. Delivery
part is taken care by the restaurants. Moreover, customers can give their review
about the restaurants and the quality of food which help the restaurants and
other customers to have a better experience. Internet and mobile app are the
only channel used for the whole process for customers to find a suitable
restaurant with better discount deals and place an order.

First restaurants review than placing order now Zomato wants to start delivering
the ordered food to customer's doorstep by their own, which was earlier taken
care by the restaurants only. In an interview with Times of India, Deepinder
Goyal, founder and CEO of Zomato said "We are working on it and we may do it
via an acquisition or partnership. Also, we might end up doing it on our own".
Zomato, entering lastmile delivery could turn out to be a positive move as India
is already a profitable market for the seven-year-old company valued at over $1
bn. Once finalized, the service would be extended to other countries in a phased
manner.
Brief History of Zomato
It all started in Delhi, in the cafeteria of Bain & Company, a prestigious
consultancy in Delhi, where Deepender and Pankaj worked. They saw people
standing in a queue and look at the menu for the food they have to order during
the lunch time. From there they got an idea of “Foodiebay” which became a
prologue to make them successful Entrepreneurs.

Firstly, the founders of Zomato started scanning the all the menu items in the
restaurant and listed it on an intranet website, after seeing a huge traffic to the
site, they decided to launch their site publicly in the year 2008. After launching
the website, they started listing restaurants in Delhi NCR, and quickly extended
to Kolkata and then Mumbai.

On November 2010, Foodiebay changed its name to Zomato. The reason behind
changing its name was to extend it beyond the food sector and also to avoid
possible confusion with the brand “ebay”, which sounds similar to “Foodiebay”.
Its quite simply a name that rhymes with ‘Tomato’ (see what they did there
being associated with everything food).

In the starting, Zomato only focused on the restaurant searching and discovery.
But now they are spreading their business with many other services including
Table Reservations, Online Ordering, POS systems and Cashless payments.

Zomato’s quick growth can also be attributed to its rapid expansion to

countries other than India. Soon after its success in Delhi-NCR, the company
started branching out to cities like Pune, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, and
Hyderabad.
FUNDING:

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.

In a fresh round a year later, Info Edge, Sequoia, and a new investor- Vy Capital
raised USD 60 million for the company. The total funding of Zomato by the
beginning of 2015, was a promising USD 113 million. In 2015, along with the 3
initial investors, Temasek- a Singapore based investment company, also
pitched in, bringing in USD 110 million for that year.

2016 was a slow year for the company in terms of funding, but 2017 picked the
pace up again with WhatsApp’s Neeraj Arora adding to the list of investors and
raising a conservative USD 20 million. This racked up the total funding of
Zomato to USD 223.8 million since its founding in 2008.

With the most recent rounds of funding, things started looking peachy for the
company in March 2018, especially with Alibaba’s Ant Financial coming into
the picture with a whopping USD 150 million.
Growth:

As funding started picking up the pace in 2010, Zomato’s presence across India
did too. 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. The company in order to keep up with its hip brand image
and humor its audiences launched a .xxx domain which had pictures strictly
dedicated to food porn.

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.

While its expansion was happening in full force, Zomato also started acquiring
foreign-based companies to maximize its business. In 2013 it acquired
Portuguese company Gastronauci and the Italian service Cibando. A big
acquisition came in when they got a hold of the American service called
NexTable which catapulted Zomato into the US market’s competition.

The Ups:

Zomato acquired MapleOS in 2015 to expand operations and build a new

customer database. This increased the functionality of Zomato by allowing it to
offer online table reservations and mobile bill payment.

In 2017, the company claimed to have turned profitable in all the 24 countries
that they operated in, along with rolling out a zero commission model. This
was done to give impetus to small businesses and restaurant owners across its
user base. They said that their revenue grew by 81% that particular year.

In 2017, the online ordering service of Zomato also crossed the milestone of 3
million orders in one month. In February 2018, after the funding from Ant
Financial Services, Zomato’s evaluation reached an unprecedented USD 1.1
billion dollars. This made Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd. the newest Indian unicorn
company on the block.

DOWN’s:

2015 came in with the need of Zomato laying off 300 employees in order to curb
losses, and 10% of these layoffs came to be in the US. Another setback in the
States happened when Zomato aquired Urbanspoon and rebranded the
company as their own. This rebranding did not workout and the venture failed
in a mammoth manner.

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.[47] On 15
October 2015, Zomato changed business strategies from a Full-Stack market to
an Enterprise market[clarification needed]. This led Zomato to reduce its
workforce by 10%, or around 300 people.[48]

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[citation needed].

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.

2016 was probably the slowest financial year for the company, and as a result,
it had to rollback its operations in 9 countries which included the US, UK, Chile,
Canada, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Italy, and Slovakia. To resume presence they
had to go ahead with a remote management service.

Lastly, Zomato again had bad PR built up for it when it was just about to reach
an evaluation of a billion and HSBC Capital slashed this evaluation down by 50%
(making it USD 550 million) thereby raising the company’s alleged losses.

Leaving of Pankaj Chadha:

Zomato has maintained a very transparent brand image since its founding days
which has left little room for a controversy. However, some of the biggest
rumors came in when the company’s top brass decided to leave in a quick
succession.

In the February of 2018, co-founder, Pankaj Chaddah quit citing no specific

reasons other than personal agendas. Soon after, 2 months later, their CBO
Mukund Kulashekaran also went ahead with his departure from the company
without any formal announcements or comments.

Along with these exits, Samir Kukreja, after a very short 8-month stint also quit
his position as the president of Zomato Base, the company’s cloud platform. All
these exits had taken place when Zomato was on its toes to fight its main
competitor Swiggy and a major position reshuffle was happening in its upper
management.
 SUCCESS FACTORS:

 First mover advantage

 Strong content platform
 Efficient employees
 Good rating mechanism and social platform
 Funding from experienced source

MARKETING STRATERGY:
 Featured and user friendly website
 Global mobile app
 Focusing on digital marketing channels for potential customers
 Acquire the competitors: To be the largest resource in food supply market, Zomato
bought urbanspoon for $52 million to enter US, Canada and Australia
 Simpler review and rating system
Integrating other tools in their marketing strategy has given them wonderful hike in
their business.

 Sales promotion: Coupons and price-offs

 Direct Marketing: Phone call and direct mail

LOGO:

The figure shows the evolution of the Zomato logo.

Present condition of Zomato:

Today, Zomato is present in over 10,000 cities across the globe with over 1.4m
active restaurants on our platform. We are the market leaders in restaurant
search/discovery in 19of the 24 countries we are in, and have 70m monthly
active users on our platform. We have5m new user registrations and 11m app
installations (Android + iOS), every month.User engagement has grown very well
— we received 16m user reviews and photos in March’19, compared to 4.5m in
March’18.

ZOMATO GOLD:

Zomato Gold is an exclusive dine out and social drinking membership program
that extends special perks like – a complimentary dish, and up to 2
complimentary drinks (think happy hours all the time), every time you dine at,
or hit the bar at any of our partner restaurants in India. Gold can be used at our
partner restaurants and bars in a very limitless way – i.e. on any day of the week,
at any hour of the day – on the entire menu – any dish or drink on the regular
menu. That means that Zomato Gold members get to save on every visit and all
you need is your phone!

Zomato Gold has partnered with over 10,000 restaurants globally to offer either
1+1 on food, or 2+2 on beverages, allowing users to get more bang for their buck
each time they dine out. Zomato Gold will continue to be a program that
constantly provides benefits that are uniquely designed for users who see great
value in frequently dining out. As on 31 March 2019, we have over 1m active
subscribers of Zomato Gold globally compared to 170k active users as on 31
March 2018.

HYPERPURE:

Hyperpure was launched in August 2018 to supply fresh, clean ingredients to

restaurants. This first-of-its-kind initiative uses an end-to-end technology-driven
platform custom-built to provide online access to fresh and clean food
ingredients to restaurants. In February 2019, a 30,000 sq. ft warehouse, built to
serve 4,000 metric ton capacity per month, was launched in Bengaluru to cater
to 2500 restaurants every day. An even larger 40,000 sq. ft warehouse in Delhi
was launched in March’19. Restaurants buying ingredients through Hyperpure
are recognised through a ‘Hyperpure Inside’ tag on Zomato, allowing users to
trust that the food they are eating is made using fully-traceable, high quality
ingredients. We are also helping farmers develop better crops that are pesticide
and chemical-free, providing them assured demand cycles and better pricing
throughout the year. Hyperpure is solving a number of supply-chain problems
and simultaneously building a more ecological model with plans to integrate
rainwater harvesting, and composting for waste.

FEEDING INDIA:

Better food for more people was a key driver in consolidating Feeding India with
Zomato. Hunger and food-wastage are important problems to solve, and what
better way to take the challenge head-on than with motivated Hunger Heroes
that work on innovative and sustainable programs to ensure all excess food from
various restaurants and venues, that would otherwise go to landfills is donated
to people in need. Feeding India has served 20 million meals with its 5 key
programs including 8,500+ volunteers working in 71 cities, 50+ community
fridges, and 21 food recovery vans.
Net Sales from 2015-2019 (in Millions)

DESIGN:

Customer’s app:

 Registration: Allow the users to sign up through email ID, phone

number, or social media accounts.
 Search & filter: The feature helps users to search for food items based
on locations, restaurants, and cuisines, assisting them in making better
decisions.
 Order placement: The app should function in a way that allows the
users to place the order in a few taps.
 Real-time tracking: Help your users track their food orders with
geolocation map integration and keep them informed with precise
ETA.
 Payment options: Integrate multiple payment gateways into your food
ordering app, allowing users to pay using the payment mode of their
choice.
 Reviews & ratings: Allow your users to provide their valuable feedback
about the behavior and the service of the delivery executive, helping
you in maintaining the quality of service.
Delivery executive’s app:

 Registration: Allow the drivers to sign up with their email ID,

phone number, or social media accounts.
 User profile: Let the drivers maintain their complete profile,
including their name, contact details, picture, driver license, and
vehicle details along with an option to edit their profiles.
 Notification alerts: When the users place the orders, the drivers
should be notified.
 GPS-enabled map integration: Integrate GPS-enabled maps into
the app, showcasing drivers the shortest route to reach the
customers’ place on time.
 Manage multiple deliveries: Give the drivers the option to deliver
multiple orders placed from nearby locations, managing the
entire process effectively.

The customers have to login first to use the app. After that they can place orders.
For placing an order they have to choose a restaurant and the dishes. Now, they
have to make payment. Payment can be made through online banking or cash
on delivey.customers can track their orders and cam also contact the delivery
agent.

Types of Testing
Functional testing ensures that the application is working as per the
requirements. Most of the tests conducted for this is driven by the user
interface and call flow.
Performance testing is undertaken to check the performance and behavior of
the application under certain conditions such as low battery, bad network
coverage, low available memory.

Installation testing: Installation testing verifies that the installation process

goes smoothly without the user having to face any difficulty. This testing
process covers installation, updating and uninstalling of an application.

Security testing checks for vulnerabilities to hacking, authentication and

authorization policies, data security, session management and other security
standards.

Laboratory testing This test is performed to find out any glitches when a
mobile application uses voice and/or data connection to perform some
functions.

Certification testing To get a certificate of compliance, each mobile device

needs to be tested against the guidelines set by different mobile platforms.

Indian online food delivery startup Zomato on January 21 said it had agreed to
buy Uber Technologies's Indian food delivery business in an all-stock deal.

Uber will in turn get a 9.9 percent stake in the Gurugram-based company.

The deal value is at around $350 million (around Rs 2,485 crore), according to
a report in The Economic Times. Moneycontrol could not independently verify
the report.Uber eats discontinued it’s operations and direct restaurants and
delivery partners to Zomato.