This is why Zomato is taking global listings seriously

Zomato, India’s well-known food listing site has launched a major site upgrade today. Along with which, they have extended their services to Manchester, Birmingham, Auckland, Wellington and Cape Town. While we will wait to test the social/community aspects before passing judgement,Firstpost chatted with Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, to understand more about the global expansion.

Why Global - isn’t Listings still a local business?

We always built Zomato with scale as its central focus. Replicating it is simple - we get the local listings, and everything else is the same with technology and marketing.

Is it really, that simple - hasn’t India grown enough to scale the business?

Of course, India has grown 30% year on year. For instance, three years ago there were 300 listed restaurants in Chandigarh, today there are 850. But the per capita penetration is still low. Auckland, for instance has 3500 restaurants.There are only three cities in India that have more than 3500 restaurants - Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

[caption id=“attachment_974799” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The new Zomato homepage[/caption]

If tourists are not your focus, how do you build recall with locals who are already using other listing services?

We get as many restaurants to promote us as possible, by offering them six months for free. Barter plays a huge part in the initial phase. But we have to build each city differently. For instance, we promote Ramzaan in Dubai and rooftop restaurants in London, when the weather is right. But once we get the listings in place, it becomes more about trust and building loyalty.

Is there a diaspora angle to the places you expand to, because you clearly need feet on the ground…

Well it’s certainly easier hiring in the UK where I know a lot of people. In Auckland for instance we had to rely on agents and job sites, something we haven’t done before.

So what is your business model? How is Zomato consumed?

Zomato’s model is still very much ads. We want as many listings as possible and we want them to be accurate.Our dependence on Google has reduced because of our focussed mobile (app) strategy. On the web too, we’ve seen direct traffic grow. It currently contributes 35%, and Social 12%. And because of this, our performance for advertising has also improved. We currently get 8.5 million visits on the web, with a 50% repeat visit rate. I think that’s pretty good.

Who is your competition?

No one in the listing business, really. Honestly, it’s more applications like Foursquare that I watch.

When I look for a listing, I also look for a review. Can we expect some content services in the future?

As you well know, content is very hard to scale and monetise. So no, we will stay away from the space.

What about user reviews, how do you view that content?

Twenty-five percent of our audience read user reviews; for us the rating is more important. But the online community is getting empowered. So you will see a curated experience of crowd-sourced content. Which also means, you will not see a lot of other mass reviews that you saw before. We will showcase those the community trusts, and keep away a lot of those who try and manipulate reviews.

Disclosure: Zomato, operates in a similar space to Burrp, a part of Network18 that also owns Firstpost.