Zomato: from India to London and now Manila

MANILA, Philippines - When it comes to startups, oftentimes the most logical of ideas works. In the case of Zomato, a company that describes itself as a “restaurant discovery platform” based out of India, it began with something as simple as scanning menus and posting it online.

Now Zomato is in seven countries including UAE, Sri Lanka, UK, Qatar, South Africa, and recently, the Philippines (www.zomato.com/manila), it’s first foray into the Southeast Asia market.

The man who did the scanning is 30-year-old Deepinder Goyal. Working at management consulting firm Bain and Company in 2008, Deepinder noticed that his colleagues would line up to view the stack of menu cards in the cafeteria during lunch. There was a rule that the menus could not be taken to the tables since people end up losing it.

That was when Deepinder got the idea to create a small intranet site which people from Bain did find useful.

And that is how Zomato was born. Together with co-founders Gunjan Patindar and Pankaj Chaddah, Deepinder the CEO has helmed Zomato into becoming one of the leading providers of extensive information on over 97,500 restaurants. Its mobile app, which has been one of the most popular apps across various countries under the Food&Drink category, has has over two million downloads. It is also available in print in select cities in India, with print versions for other cities on the way.

Philstar.com had the opportunity to interview Deepinder to know more about Zomato’s success and its plans for the Philippines.

Why did you choose the Philippines as your first market in Southeast Asia?

We have been focusing on increasing our reach beyond India over the last year and we wanted to expand into Southeast Asia, as it is a big market for a product like ours. The choice for our next market launch was between the Philippines and Bangkok. However, we found the Philippines to be a bigger market and since Zomato is currently available only in English, we decided to go with the Philippines first.

When we sent our team to Manila, we noticed that smartphone penetration in the Philippines is very high and given the fact that the Philippines is a very cosmopolitan country that loves to eat, it made for a perfect market for a product like ours. The phenomenal response we received in Manila in just one month since we launched, has reinstated our belief and our resolve to expand our services further into SEA in the months to come.

And we are very excited to be in the Philippines, and hope that the locals like our service and use it to discover great places to eat around them. Our team spent two weeks in the country and loved it enough to never want to leave. It's always great to be in a cosmopolitan city that loves to eat, and we hope to be an integral part of its dining culture for a long time to come.

What sets Zomato apart from the other existing dining guides that Filipinos have become used to?

The same thing that works for us everywhere—we actually go around town and collect content on our own. We scan each and every menu card and put it up online for users to view for free. We geo-code restaurants on our own and do not rely on erroneous public maps information to tell customers where they should go. If a restaurant exists, we want to see it for ourselves and then provide that information to people. Overall, we are a better product, with content that actually matters. Not everyone has the time to read 1000 reviews for a restaurant—but everyone wants to know what is served and how much will it cost.

By the way, is there a particular reason behind the name?

We picked the name Zomato for multiple reasons. The primary reason was that we wanted to gradually diversify into non-food categories and also because we wanted a powerful brand name. We had a few options and everybody unanimously loved Zomato, it was a no-brainer.

When you first expanded to the Middle East, what did you learn from that about the online habits of diners? Do they look for just one particular dish or restaurant?

Dubai has been a very interesting dining-out market for us. We see an increase in people searching for dining out options before dinner with Thursday being the peak time during the week. The interesting part for Dubai is the searches within the New Dubai area (places like JBR and Marina) witness a much larger increase during weekends than those in older parts of Dubai like Bur Dubai and Deira, which see a high number of visitors during the weekdays itself.

The trend sort of indicates that users from these areas prefer places close to home during the weekdays but make their way south as the week ends. As the weather has been kind this year until recently, we have also noticed a lot of activity among users utilizing the "Outdoor Seating" filter on Zomato to choose places where they can enjoy their meals outside. The users normally search by location or cuisines more that restaurants as people are largely focused on the area they want to dine out at or explore options around their homes in case they want to order in.

How does Zomato pick its reviewers?

All our users are encouraged to write a review on the website.  We have even built social layers on the website to encourage more users to write genuine reviews about their experiences and have seen a great response with more meaningful significant reviews coming in over the last couple of months. The reviews are posted by users real time. However, they are looked at by a moderator within 12 hours of getting posted. Sometimes, if there is usage of unacceptable language, or if the review is of very low value to an end user (e.g. just one word - 'ok'), it will get removed altogether. But this is rare. We do make grammatical and spelling corrections to the reviews to increase the readability of a review for the end user.

Will Zomato have anything special planned for its users in the Philippines?

We launched the Metro Manila section by giving an iPad Mini to the first 20 connoisseurs in Manila and the response has been overwhelming. In just a little over a month since our launch in Manila, we are already receiving around 100 reviews a day and the numbers are growing. We also have a "Write For A Bite" contest for our reviewers where the best reviews picked by our moderators win a restaurant voucher every week.

We have a tiered system for reviewers—you join as a foodie, you gain trust with the reviews you write and the followers you get and improve your status to become a big foodie, then a super foodie and then attain the ultimate status of a Connoisseur. Since the tiers are a mix of the reviews the user writes and the number of people on Zomato who follow the user's activity, it works great for the volume and quality of reviews, and also increases engagement levels on other social media platforms.

Where will Zomato land next?

In the very near term, we are focusing on increasing our foot-print within the 7 countries where we are already present. This means, increasing the number of cities we cover in Philippines, South Africa and UK.

We have a healthy road map for countries where we wish to establish a presence for Zomato. This includes countries markets closer to our existing locations as well as some far flung markets in North and South America.