Zomato Project
Zomato Project
Zomato Project
Investments
Acquisitions
Zomato has acquired 12 startups globally. In July 2014, Zomato
made its first acquisition by buying Menu-mania for an
undisclosed sum.The company pursued other acquisitions such
as lunchtime.cz and obedovat.sk for a combined US$3.25
million.In September 2014, Zomato acquired Poland-based
restaurant search service Gastronauci for an undisclosed
sum. Three months later, it acquired Italian restaurant search
service Cibando.
Zomato also acquired Seattle-based food portal, Urbanspoon, for
an estimated $60 million in 2015. Other acquisitions of 2015
include Mekanist in an all-cash deal, the Delhi-based startup
MapleGraph that built MaplePOS (renamed Zomato Base), and
NexTable, a US-based table reservation and restaurant
management platform.
In 2016, the company acquired Sparse Labs, a logistics
technology startup, and the food delivery startup, Runnr, in 2017.
In September 2018, Zomato acquired Bengaluru-based food e-
marketplace, TongueStun Food, for about $18 million in a cash
and stock deal.In December 2018, Zomato acquired Lucknow-
based startup, TechEagle Innovations, that works exclusively on
drones, for an undisclosed amount. Zomato claimed that the
acquisition will help pave the way towards drone-based food
delivery in India, building technology aimed at a hub-to-hub
delivery network.
On 21st January, 2020, Zomato acquired its rival Uber Eats'
business in India in an all stock deal.
Security Breaches
Controversies
"Food has no religion" tweet
In July 2019, Zomato received a Hindu customer's complaint that
he was assigned a non-Hindu delivery boy for his food order
in Jabalpur and had asked Zomato to provide a Hindu delivery
boy. The customer alleged that Zomato had refused to change
the rider after which he asked to cancel the order. The customer
then posted this incident on social media site, Twitter after which
Zomato responded to the message stating: "Food doesn't have a
religion. It is a religion.", as a response. The tweet received mixed
responses, and some users criticized the company for using Jain
food and halal tags on food items. The company issued a
clarification that these tags were placed by restaurant owners and
not by Zomato.
Logout campaign
On 17 August 2019, more than 1,200 restaurants logged off from
Zomato because of their offer of discount programmes at dine-in
restaurants.In Pune alone, more than 450 restaurants stopped
serving to Zomato Gold because of aggressive discounts and loss
of business.However, Zomato founder Goyal admitted mistake,
became ready to rectify it and called for sanity and truce.He also
urged restaurants to stop #Logout campaign.