Zomato plans to expand to 40 countries by 2016

NEW DELHI: Online restaurant guide and food ordering firm Zomato is looking to expand its presence to around 40 countries by the end of 2016, as a part of its global growth plans.

The company currently has presence in 22 countries and provides in-depth information of over 1.4 million restaurants.

"We will have around 40 countries by end of 2016. We will be adding about 18 countries by the end of the next year," Zomato Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal told PTI.

The markets that figure on the company's expansion plan include Europe, South East Asia and Latin America, as these are reasonably large size (markets) and many of them don't have a large enough player, he added.

"We have already started looking for people in all these countries but launching in any country takes around 6 months. We always start with hiring the country manager first and in general it takes about three months to find the right person and then all other things become easy," Goyal said.

When asked if Zomato was also looking for taking inorganic route for future growth, Goyal said: "We are very ad-hoc when it comes to inorganic growth. We are not hunting for acquisitions. It will be mainly organic growth."

The CEO further said India and UAE have been profitable for a long time. The other markets that have become profitable are New Zealand, Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa, Qatar and Lebanon.

Going forward Zomato is planning to restructure the company into two key business verticals -- Consumers and Enterprise.

"We are planing to gradually restructure Zomato into two business verticals -- 'Consumers' side of business which will have apps for consumers that is Zomato app and website, and 'Enterprise' which will have products that are being made for restaurants," he added.

On the enterprise side there will be white-label apps, table reservation software called book, payments product called cashless and point of sale called base, he said.

Zomato has so far raised total funding to $225 million from four investors - Info Edge, Sequoia India, Vy Capital and Temasek.

Founded in 2008, Zomato employs over 3,000 people across 22 countries. Available on web and mobile, it provides restaurant information such as menus, contact details, pictures and user reviews.