 "Zomato CEO sees a mobile only future for the company")
Popular restaurant listing site Zomato recently raised over Rs 227.6 crore from Sequoia Capital and Info Edge India Ltd to fund its expansion in overseas markets. Zomato was one of the first online services in India to global. We spoke to Zomato CEO and co-founder Deepinder Goyal on future plans for the company and what the competition is like.Edited excerpts:
Zomato has announcedthe launch of new services in Brazil (Sao Paulo), Turkey (Istanbul, Ankara), and Indonesia (Jakarta) and the expansion of its services within the UK from three cities to five, with the inclusion of Glasgow.How has the global response been to Zomato in countries where you expanded recently such as UK and New Zealand, etc?
The response has been great in the markets where we recently expanded as there are no good products out there. It’s been an extremely easy ride for us in these other markets. Not talking about UK, where the competition is much stiffer and it has been slightly tougher. Everywhere else we’ve managed to get good traffic coming in, we’re pretty comfortable in the other markets. It will take a little longer for us to crack UK.
[caption id=“attachment_1216415” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Deepinder Goyal of Zomato[/caption]
What about global competition from services such as Yelp, Zagat (which was recently acquired by Google and is now a part of the Google Maps service)? How does an Indian start-up aim to compete with that?
Google is only good for one thing, and that is search. It has never been able to catch the local search in that sense. Even after acquiring Zagat, which does make a difference but not that much. I wouldn’t say that Zagat is too much of a competition to us for now. Yelp, I would say, is the only competition to us for now but that is also only in the US. Outside of the US, I would say no one uses Yelp.
What’s Zomato’s USP going to be in the global platform? What’s the audience you plan to target in such markets?
I think we just have a better product. We have just one aim: to help people find better restaurants and we do that very well. All the other players like Yelp are trying to get into a lot of verticals on the same platform. We stick to restaurants and that is what our USP will be.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsAs far as your business model is concerned, you had said earlier in an interview with us that your dependence on Google has reduced because of your focussed mobile (app) strategy. How strongly have you seen mobile traffic grow in India for this year and what’s the plan for future when it comes to mobile in India?
Mobile traffic is growing very, very strongly, so much so, that we are gearing to be a mobile only company in the future. In about a couple of years, I don’t think we will even have a fully functional website and it will only be mobile.
Will we see an expansion on Zomato from restaurants and nightlife etc to say city tours, landmarks etc? How much of a growth do you see in the restaurant listing business where India in particular is concerned?
Not really, we’re sticking to one thing that’s restaurant listing and we do that well. As far growth in the restaurant listing business is concerned we see a huge amount of growth. In India, the restaurant business is growing very fast, India is adding about 10 percent in terms of restaurants year-on-year. That’s huge growth just from the supply side of it. Then on the demand side, we are also seeing huge traffic growth.
While search has been the driver of the listing business, do you see reservations becoming a new market in India?
Not yet. I think the reservations business is still too early for India. It might take a couple of years before it takes off in India.
So what do you think are service extensions of search in the restaurant listing space?
Right now it’s too early for anything else. Our focus for now in restaurant listing is to help people differentiate the good places from the bad ones. Even if we’re able to do that in the next two years, that would be something great for us.
Would you ever pay your reviewers, given they are providing a lot of content for the site?
No, we don’t have plans to pay reviewers. The paid reviews don’t work and they are generally always biased. We do have awards and contests for reviews but we don’t have paid reviews and we are unlikely to launch them.
Any plans to release a dedicated Zomato app for iPad/Android tablets?
No, we’ve seen more usage on mobile phones than on tabs and anybody who uses a tab can always open our website. Our website is totally touch optimised, that’s just how we wanted it to be. If you try loading the site on the iPad, the experience is just the same as one the desktop. We don’t really see the need for a separate app for iPad or a tab for now.
Disclosure: Burrp, which is part of Network18 that also owns Firstpost, is engaged in a similar business as Zomato.
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