BRAND ANALYSIS OF ZOMATO

The research proposal submitted in partial fulfilment of the course Strategic

Management for obtaining the degree B.B.A., L.L.B. (Hons.) during the
academic session 2021-2022.

Submitted by

Rishabh Gupta

Roll No. - 2250

Submitted To

Prof Manoj Mishra.

March, 2022

Chanakya National Law University,

Nyaya Nagar,

Mithapur,

Patna, 800001.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 2

INTRODUCTION 3

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES & sources of data 4

1. 4

2. 4

BRAND ANALYSIS 7

1. 7

2. 8

3. 9

a) 9

b) 9

c) 10

4. 10

a) 10

b) 11

5. 11

a) 11

b) 12

c) 12

d) 12

6. 13

INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION 15

REFERENCES 16

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 INTRODUCTION

A Brand simply means a distinctive feature about a product or a service offered by a supplier
that makes it unique and different from that of the other supplier’s product. So, a brand can be
a Design of the product, or the symbol or a name which is completely distinctive and gives the
product its own unique identity. The basic purpose behind a building a brand name is to
facilitate recognition of the product in the minds of the consumer. If branding is effective it
results in higher number of sales thereby increasing profits for the company and creating trust
among the ultimate customers, which in turn helps in the sale of other products as well which
are related to that Brand. The practical example of leading online food providers and
establishing their brand name in the e-business are, Swiggy, Uber-Eats, Foodpanda and
Zomato.

In order to build a successful brand, it is necessary for a business to know its competition,
consumer base and target audience. These all segments are covered under Market research
which enables the business to formulate a strategy to build brand name. Marketing research
enables a business to formulate a strategy in order to sell their product and evaluate the consume
behavior for that particular product. The market research is a systematic analysis of
opportunities, threats, strengths and weakness of a marketing strategy, also to monitor the
product performance and other problems involved in marketing of a particular product or
service. Marketing research enables to discover a problem and help address the problem,
through designing methods for gathering information relating to data collection process,
analyzing the results and implementing them to solve the problem.

The present study focuses on the brand analysis of ‘Zomato’ being the first Indian tech
company to be a global brand, and making its name in the e-commerce platform and e-food
industry. Zomato is an online website which enables the customer to order food online and also
is an online discover guide to find new places to eat and hangout like, clubs, dine-outs,
restaurants, and bars. ‘The overall brand social media strategy of Zomato was remarkable as it
chose social media as a platform to create awareness about the website on Facebook, Pinterest,
Twitter and Instagram. Zomato aims to be a place where the Foodies hangout and wants to be
a brand to be famous worldwide on the e-food platform and to be the first option in the
consumers mind while ordering food. Over the years Zomato’s own app has gained world wide
recognition due its user interactive interface, and providing for scanned menus of various
restaurants, indicating the geographical location of a place, pictures of the food and the place,

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affordable prices, cuisines served, restaurants timings, and various e-payment options.’ This
way Zomato is able to build a brand name and acquire customer trust and support. Over the
years Zomato is able to gain a customer base of more than one hundred million active users.
Zomato is leading the food industry and expanding its business in more than 19 countries
around the world, thus gaining a global recognition and building its name in e-food industry.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES & SOURCES OF DATA

1. THE RESEARCH OBJECTIVES FOR THE PRESENT STUDY:

 To study and understand the branding and marketing strategy of Zomato.

● To analyze the Target market, market segmentation and current positioning of the
brand as per consumer perception.
● To suggest scope of improvement for the brand as per consumer responses
● To understand the strength, weakness, opportunities and threats faced by Zomato in e-
food industry.
● To analyze the competition faced by the brand, and what strategies does Zomato
adopted to remain in the competition.
2. SOURCES OF DATA-
The sources of data used for the present study is ‘secondary’ in nature. The data gathered
in order to facilitate the research was collected from, newspaper, magazines, research
articles, consumer food blogs, Zomato blogs, policy guidelines & social media pages of
Zomato.

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 DECLARATION BY CANDIDATE

I, RISHABH GUPTA, student of Chanakya National Law University hereby declare that the work
reported in the B.B.A.LL.B. (HONS.) Project report entitled: BRAND ANALYSIS OF
ZOMATO submitted at Chanakya National Law University, Patna is an authentic record of
my work carried out under the supervision of Prof. Manoj Mishra. I have not submitted this
work elsewhere for any other degree or diploma. I am responsible for the contents of my Project
Report.

NAME: Rishabh Gupta

ROLL NO: 2250

COURSE: B.B.A., LL.B. (Hons.)

SEMESTER: 2021-2022 (6th).

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank my faculty of Jurisprudence, Prof. Manoj Mishra whose guidance helped
me a lot with structuring of my project. I take this opportunity to express my deep sense of
gratitude for his guidance and encouragement which sustained my efforts on all stages of this
project.

I owe the present accomplishment of my project to my friends, who helped me immensely with
materials throughout the project and without whom I couldn’t have completed it in the present
way.

I would also like to extend my gratitude to my parents and all those unseen hands that helped
me out at every stage of my project.

THANK YOU

NAME: RISHABH GUPTA

ROLL NO: 2250

COURSE: B.B.A., LL.B. (Hons.)

SEMESTER: 2021-2022 (6th)

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 BRAND ANALYSIS

1. BACKGROUND OR HISTORY OF THE BRAND

Zomato is an online discovery guide for restaurants, bars, pubs and clubs and for dine-outs.
The website helps in defining the restaurant/pub/club on the basis of presence or absence of
air conditioning, smoking area, Wi-Fi Internet, stag entry, live performances and outdoor
seating or whether non-vegetarian food and alcohol are served or not. The website is customer
friendly and user interactive as the registered users are required to post reviews and rate on a
scale of 1 - 5 stars, the restaurants on the basis of their choice, visit and experience. Zomato
also provides information related to cuisines served, operation timings, approximate cost of a
meal for two, credit cards accepted or not. Because of Zomato, finding a great place to eat,
ordering food, reserving tables, and giving positive or negative feedback for a restaurant has
become very easy and accessible for the consumer. The pioneer and leader of this segment in
India has been Zomato. Zomato is a brand, which every consumer would associate to when he
thinks of an e-food platform.
Zomato started as the website Foodiebay.com, by Deepinder Goyal, a post-graduate from IIT
Delhi. Foodiebay officially started in July 2008 with a list of 1,200 restaurants in the Delhi
NCR region. This database expanded to 2,000 restaurants by end 2008. Expanded its reach to
Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune within the next six months. In November 2010,
Foodiebay.com was renamed Zomato.com. The brand name was changed due to a possible
move outside of the food vertical and also to avoid a possible conflict with eBay, because the
earlier brand name Foodiebay contained ‘eBay’ in it. In August 2010, Zomato got its first round
of funding of $1million from Info Edge. Info Edge funded fourth round worth $10 million
which gives them a 57.9% stake in Zomato. Seeing the future and growth of Zomato, Sequoia
Capital and Info Edge, India in November 2013 funded Zomato with $37 million. Info Edge
now owned 50.1% of Zomato on an investment of INR 143 crores. The total funding raised by
Zomato till November 2013 stands at $53.5 million. Recently in a fresh round of funding in
April 2015, Info Edge, India has invested an amount of Rs 155 crore in Zomato.

In 2012, Zomato spread wings internationally and began expanding overseas by extending its
services to Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, South Africa, UK, and the Philippines.
The year 2013 saw New Zealand, Turkey, and Brazil get added to its list. During this time
Zomato also kept working on its tech backbone to match the boom in the smartphone trend and

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launched its app. A Delhi-based start-up, after expanding its operations within India, is now
present in 22 countries across the globe like, India, United States, Australia, Canada, Czech
Republic, Chile, Ireland, Indonesia, Italy, Lebanon, Malaysia etc. It was also in 2015 that
Zomato, struggling with falling revenues, carried out its massive layoff. The company,
however, managed to get something good out of the year by acquiring MapleOS, which would
allow it to expand its directory, database, and operations, and add online reservations and
mobile bill payment to its service portfolio. listing over 1 million restaurants, with a workforce
of 2000 plus people, making it India’s leading international eatery finding website and app,
with a valuation of USD 660 million. With multiple rounds of funding, Info Edge has by far
capitalized INR 4.83 billion in Zomato and holds a 50% stake in the company. Also, Zomato
has a traffic of over 100 million people visiting Zomato each month and 82% of the traffic
comes from outside India. With its headquarter in New Delhi, Zomato.com is providing career
opportunity to over 350 employees all across the globe.

2. TARGET MARKET, MARKET SEGMENTATION OF THE BRAND AND POSITIONING OF THE

BRAND

Target Market: Zomato’s target audience includes people between 18 to 35 years of age who
have access to smartphones and are comfortable in using apps. It targets two kinds of
customers: The first group includes people who want to order their food home and the second
group includes people who prefer to dine out. It offers food delivery to those who need it
delivered as well as gives incentives to people to dine out through its Zomato Gold program.

Market segmentation: the brand focuses on the Young population, working professionals
looking for information of restaurants. Working professionals who need food in their offices,
students who need food in their hostels, people who do not have time or space to cook for
themselves, and people who occasionally like to eat outside food, these all form a part of
Zomato’s target audience.

Positioning: The website is very popular and common these days among the youth
especially, since they want to experiment new places to dine-out or enjoy with their friends
and family.it has a presence in 11 countries and lists more than 3,00,000 restaurants. Its
website gets 15 million visits a month. The sheer amount of content aggregated daily sets
them apart from its competitors and gets connected to their customers. Zomato is present
across all social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus which

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allows it to keep interacting with its customers base on a regular interval and communicating
the fact that Zomato is for the love of food and is the first place to reach out to when it's
about food.

3. MARKET ANALYSIS

The five factors which have contributed in a strong market strategy of Zomato are
technological, Economical factors and Social media strategy-

a) Technological factors-
● Zomato has designed a beautiful and interactive User Interface, which easy to browse
differentiating it from other Indian tech start-ups. The speed with which the website
opens is amazing and the mobile app is also very fast.
● The restaurant finder module is also very well made. It has been integrated with the
app as well which is the highlight because one will need to find the restaurant on the
go. The restaurant information is well thought out and organized which makes sure
you get the information you are looking for without any hassle.
● The website is Search Engine Optimization friendly, which makes sure that it pops
up on the search engine.
● The business model of the Zomato Revolves around gate keeping of information,
which means that when you call a restaurant, its number gets masked, and you are
being routed through Zomato. It also requires you to login to use the service. The
reason behind this is Zomato needs to compete with companies like Google and thus
to get the funding they need more registered users.

b) Social media Strategy:

● Facebook
There is a huge engagement of customers on Facebook. Zomato has more than 600k strong
Facebook community.
● Twitter
Twitter is a place where Zomato is sparkling. It has more than 114 k followers there. Used
as a conversation platform with the customers, Zomato is doing a great job in engaging
their customers on their page. They answers all the queries raised over the platform by the
customers.
● Blog

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 Sharing and updating with all the latest updates is a key point for any organization. Zomato
uses their blog as their mouthpiece to share all the latest updates.
● Pinterest
The platform shares the food experience with great content to attract their customers. The
company needs to do a lot of job to make its followers on this platform which will certainly
work in their promotion.
● Instagram
This platform lets the user share the foodie photographs just by sharing it using the tag
#Zomato. The image automatically gets shared on the microsite. Nowadays Instagram is
trending and through advertising this platform, Zomato has received a huge recognition.

c) Economic factors-
● Zomato revenue was 96.7 crore INR in 2014-15. Zomato is present in 22 countries
and contributing to respective economies of the countries, and at present Zomato
has more than hundred million customer base.
● Increase in service tax from 12.36% to 14% will lead to increase in prices of
services which in turn will impact Zomato
● Zomato is starting cashless transaction which will create jobs in various cities.
Currently, Zomato employs 2319 employees
● Zomato is attracting various investments and funding from Indian as well as foreign
investors which in turn is good for Indian economy.

4. COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
As Zomato is a leading online food providing website and also an online discovery guide, it
has immense competition in the e-business and e-food industry. Zomato faces local
competition, i.e. competing with other India based brand, as well as global competition, i.e
competing with foreign-based brand.

a) Local Competition faced by Zomato-

● Swiggy: Founded in 2014, Swiggy is India’s one of the leading brand in onlie food
providing services and, as of March 2019, was operating out of 100 Indian cities. It
is a major rival to Zomato.
● Foodpanda– foodpanda who has also acquired TastyKhana and JustEat is a
competitor to Zomato in this marketspace. But, as per one of interviews with Mr.

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 Deepinder Goyal, Zomato doesn’t consider it as a threat because foodpanda in spite
of being present in market for 3 years has clocked only 10,000 orders a day whereas
people visiting Zomato has 1, 00,000 searches a day. Zomato’s large sales team gives
an added advantage to Zomato.
● Burrp! – it is a competitor to Zomato. But due to its expansion from restaurant listing
to other divisions such as events and retail outlets, the company’s focus has been
distributed whereas Zomato has stuck to its core functions.
b) Global Competition faced by Zomato-
Yelp – Yelp is the biggest competitor to Zomato in US. It is present in 31 countries. To counter
Yelp, Zomato acquired UrbanSpoon in US but still there is major gap. . In terms of revenue,
Zomato earned $6 million in revenue compared to Yelp’s $232 million in 2014.

● HungerGo – HungerGo is major player in Singapore where Zomato doesn’t want to

enter due to tough competition poised by HungerGo.
● Yadig & Timeout – Yadig and TimeOut are other major players in UAE but Zomato
is market leader in UAE with 65% market share.

5. SWOT ANALYSIS
a) STRENGTHS
● Global presence- Listing more than a million restaurants spread in over 10,000
cities across 25 countries, and still expanding while recently acquired Uber Eats
● Focused solely on food and restaurants, its content is created by its own employees
rather than crowd- sourcing it
● Aggressive and Innovative marketing strategy -Focused on the social layers on the
website and on maintaining a proper platform which is interactive at the same time,
that why Zomato is Customer friendly.
● Mobile application app has recorded 2.5 million downloads; 45% traffic comes
from mobile application
● Expanded overseas in September 2012 by launching services in UAE, followed by
swift expansion across south east Asia, UK, South Africa, Europe
● Acquired Urban spoon in January 2015 for $55 million; establishing operations in
the US, Canada and Australia, thus receiving a global recognition
● Profitable in India and the UAE due to Strong brand recognition

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 b) WEAKNESSES
● With expansion to various countries, it now has competitors like Yelp in USA
which are much older and bigger than Zomato, thus a global competitor.
● As a result of hard focus on global expansion, Zomato lost out on the first mover
advantage in the field of online food delivery to Tiny Owl, food panda.
● Quality and veracity of data; in many cases the information regarding menu cards
is either incomplete or old. For example, in certain restaurants, menu card without
prices in mentioned. In certain other cases, the menu is partial.
● Competition from search engines & other similar apps means limited growth

c) OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunities can be broadly classified into 2 categories:
● New Emerging Markets
With India’s internet population poised to rise to half a billion by 2018, zomato’s market is all
set to grow further. The number of people using their phones to access the internet has grown
spectacularly and such a growth rate results in a huge market to tap. Being an acquisition
hungry company, it wants to expand globally

● Online Services
a. Zomato for Business: A subscription-based model wherein merchants have access to
their listings. This allows them to share daily discounts, promos or special menus,
increasing their interaction with consumers on a real-time basis
b. Cashless transactions: diners at participating restaurants pay through the Zomato app,
eliminating the need to use cash/swipe cards. On every such transaction, Zomato
receives a percentage cut on the total amount. There is huge opportunity for such a
venture in the other existing markets.
c. Online Ordering Service - online delivery services provided across India.
d. Zomato Book: To be launched in Australia, India and UAE, through acquiring
NexTable of USA, this is a platform for reserving restaurants and managing tables

d) THREATS
● Intense competition from national and international brands - With expansion to
various countries, it now has competitors like Yelp which are much older and bigger
than Zomato. On the other hand, we have small players which are slowly covering

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 ground in domestic area like, Foodpanda, Burrp, Swiggy, etc.
● Threat of new entrants and a Strong Brand NameA brand name is a must to survive
in the industry. Zomato has been very effective in the past few years. However, they
have been late in entering the ordering segment and Food Panda has taken effective
strides in the same. Any new competitors will need to work extensively on their
brand value in order to effectively compete. Thus, this threat is low for Zomato.
● Geographical Factors affecting Competition-Food Panda is present in 200 Indian
cities and has made huge strides in the recent past and Swiggy has almost expanded
to one hundred cities. This is a threat to Zomato.

6. FUTURE OF THE BRAND

Zomato, with its ability to culturally adapt to the needs of the market and be technologically
innovative, has been able to gain the market share and maintain a competitive edge. Due to
the tie-ups with Emirates NBD and operations in a tax-free economy, Zomato gained a
strong regional support from Dubai which facilitated its expansion in rest of the UAE.
Zomato acknowledged the need to recruit local people to have a better cultural and ground-
level understanding of the market making it easier, faster and convenient to connect to the
restaurateurs and market their products. Zomato has already started to monetize its
operations in India and Dubai since they have become profitable.

Recently, Zomato has introduced an in-app chat feature in India and UAE that lets the user
to track or cancel meal orders, check status of refunds, get information on promotional offers,
discounts, etc, thus, enhancing the communication flow between the users and Zomato. It
has also introduced an innovative feature called Zomato Whitelabel, a platform for
corporations to build and administer their own Android and iOS apps- even with slight to
not- so-much technical proficiencies. Also in working is Zomato Base, a POS point of sale,
technique app which facilitates real time consumer-business interface, in order to create a
stronger interface between the customers and restaurateurs, Zomato has comprehensively
invested in SMO (Social Media optimization), SEO (Search engine Optimization) and has
worked a lot to reach the customers. This shows progressive online strategy to gain the
customers trust which be beneficial in the future.

Due to different market regions, the strategies adopted by Zomato also differentiates. Even

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though advertising is the main source of revenue from Middle east and Asian markets, the
same cannot be applied to the U.S. markets. There the company focuses on earning revenue
through transactions businesses which led to shift in focus to table management and
reservations engine known as Zomato Book. Through this segregation of markets and
business operations, Zomato expects 40% of their revenues from advertisements, 30% of
revenues from orders and the remaining 30% from Enterprise products like Zomato Book,
Zomato Cashless, etc.
Through acquisitions, Zomato was able to tap the market’s potential using the existing
network and leveraging its technological expertise. Recently in 2020 only Zomato has
acquired Uber Eats and now all Uber Eats customers in India will now be redirected to
Zomato. The deal is likely to give Zomato an edge over the competition in the near future.

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 INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION

The website Zomato.com, receives more than 15 million visits monthly, and globally is one of
the best websites in the Restaurants and Delivery category. The Mobile App ‘Zomato’, has
been download by more than 5 million, thereby providing Zomato a large customer base. Their
slogan “Never have a bad meal” and quick delivery service has created trust among customers.
The brand has gone global and created a lot of opportunities for itself as it is successful in
opening 1.5 million restaurants across the almost 25 countries. Zomato has introduced Zomato
Gold, a programme which provides free food and drinks on certain orders in selected
restaurants.it was criticised as the Restaurants were not profiting from it and it also damaged
some of Zomato’s goodwill. But the company has not cancelled the Zomato Gold program as
Zomato is trying constantly to get the revenue boost.

The fact that Zomato provides for user friendly interface and contributes to User Engagement,
is very helpful for the customers, and thereby Zomato helps create trust among the customer
and attracts them towards it. Also, the Reviews and Ratings policy introduced by Zomato
makes the website very engaging which ensures customer participation. In 2020 itself, Zomato
acquired Uber Eats thereby expanding its brand and creating more revenue. All Uber Eats
customers in India will now be redirected to Zomato and the deal is likely to give Zomato an
edge over its rival Swiggy in the near future.

Though Zomato uses social media as a communicating platform, but recently it is not being
utilised properly by Zomato. Like, the Facebook page should be more active to interact with
consumers. Also, Zomato needs to keep innovating. New features like virtual tour of
restaurants should be added, Live video shots from cafes can be added if some famous band is
performing over there. It must ensure that Authenticity of the reviews should be maintained.
Paid reviews should not be encouraged, as it will dilute the brand. Zomato has been
continuously acquiring companies for expansion but Zomato is missing out on strengthening
and innovating on the existing network by focusing on expansion. There are a lot of things
which they can do to get more people to use their services for e.g. Online delivery – they lost
out on the first mover advantage by not focusing on this and allowed breeding ground for start-
up’s like Foodpanda to get into this space and stand up as a competitor. Hence, it may not be
the best policy to ignore the existing market while being on the mission of expansion.

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 REFERENCES

ARTICLES REFERRED:

1. Aniruddha Deshpande, ZOMATO- Market and Consumer Analysis (Retrieved January 19,
2020,)fromhttps://www.google.com-and-brand-strategy-of-zomato-
IJERTV6IS060356.pdf&usg.com
2. Ms. Harshleen Kaur Sethi, Product and Brand Strategy of Zomato, (Retrieved January 19,
2020,) http://www.ijert.org.IJERTV6lSo6o356.com
3. Prashant Raman, Zomato: A shining armor in the food tech sector, (Retrieved January
19,2020),http://timesofindia.indiatimes.comhttp://www.dnaindia.com/http://www.ibef.or
g/news/

BOOKS REFERRED-

1. Naresh K. Malhotra and Satyabhushan Dash, ‘MARKETING RESEARCH’, (7 th

Edition, page 10, Pearson, 2016).

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