Zomato is a restaurant search and discovery service founded in 2008 by Indian entrepreneurs Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. It currently operates in 23 countries, including Australia and United States. It provides information and reviews on restaurants, including images of menus where the restaurant does not have its own website.
Video Zomato
History
The service began as Foodiebay, and in November 2010 was renamed as Zomato.
Between 2010-13, Zomato raised approximately US$16.7 million from Info Edge (India) giving them a 57.9% stake in Zomato.
By 2011, Zomato launched in Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad and introduced smartphone applications. With the introduction of .xxx domains in 2011, Zomato also launched zomato.xxx, a site dedicated to food porn. The company also launched a print version of the website content, "Citibank Zomato Restaurant Guide", in collaboration with Citibank in May 2012, but it has since been discontinued.
In September 2012, Zomato expanded overseas to the United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Qatar, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, and South Africa. In 2013, the company launched in New Zealand, Turkey, Brazil, and Indonesia with its website and apps available in Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, Indonesian, and English. In November 2013, it raised an additional US$37 million from Sequoia Capital and Info Edge (India).
In April 2014, Zomato launched its services in Portugal. In July, it made its first acquisition by buying Menu-mania for an undisclosed sum. The company pursued other acquisitions such as Lunchtime.cz (from the Czech Republic) and Obedovat.sk (from Slovakia) for a combined US$3.25 million.
In September, Zomato acquired Poland-based restaurant search service Gastronauci for an undisclosed sum. In October, the firm launched its services in Canada. Shortly after, in November, it extended its reach to Lebanon and Ireland as well. In December, it acquired Italian restaurant search service Cibando.
In November 2014, Zomato completed another round of funding of US$60 million at a post-money valuation of ~US$660 million. This round of funding was being led jointly by Info Edge and Vy Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital.
Zomato acquired Seattle-based food portal Urbanspoon for an estimated $60 million.
The acquisition marked the firm's entry into the United States, Canada and Australia, and brought it into direct competition with Yelp, Zagat and OpenTable. In the same month, the firm also acquired Mekanist in an all-cash deal.
April 2015 saw another round of funding for Zomato, led by Info Edge, Vy Capital and Sequoia Capital, this time of US$50 million. In September 2015, Zomato raised another US$60 million, led by Temasek, a Singapore government-owned investment company, along with Vy Capital. Zomato's total funding to ~$225 million which comes from a close set of four investors: Info Edge, Sequoia India, Vy Capital, and Temasek Holdings.
In April 2015, Zomato acquired Delhi based startup MapleGraph that built MaplePOS. Zomato renamed the MaplePOS product to Zomato Base. In the same month, the firm also acquired NexTable, a US-based table reservation and restaurant management platform.
In February 2017, Zomato in a company's blog had explained the concept of cloud kitchen. With its cloud kitchen, the company will help the restaurants to expand their presence without incurring any fixed costs.
In September 2017, Zomato claimed that the company had "turned profitable" in the 24 countries it currently operates in. Furthermore, Zomato announced that the "zero commission model" is to be introduced for partner restaurants.
Zomato narrowed down its losses by 34% to INR389 Cr for the financial year 2016-17, from Rs 590.1 Cr crore in the previous year 2015-16.
Maps Zomato
Zomato security breaches
On 4 June 2015, an Indian security researcher hacked the Zomato website, gained access to information about 62.5 million users. Using the vulnerability, he was able to access personal data of users such as phone number, email address, and Instagram private photos using their Instagram access token. Zomato fixed the issue within 48 hours of it becoming apparent. On 15 October 2015, Zomato changed business strategies from a Full-Stack market to an enterprise market. This led Zomato to fire 10% of its workforce, around 300 people.
On 18 May 2017, India Zomato again became the target of hacking. A security blog called Hackread claimed over 17 million accounts had been breached. "The database includes emails and password hashes of Zomato users, while the price set for the whole package is $1,001.43 (Bitcoins 0.5587). The vendor also shared a trove of sample data to prove it is legit", Hackread's post said. Hackread claimed details of 17 million users had meanwhile been sold on the Dark Web. Zomato confirmed that names, email addresses and encrypted passwords were taken from its database. The company reassured affected customers that no payment information or credit card details were stolen.
Zomato said the security measures it uses ensure the stolen passwords can't be converted back into normal text, but it still urged users who use the same password on other services to change them. It also logged the affected users out of the app and reset their passwords.
"So far, it looks like an internal (human) security breach - some employee's development account got compromised", the company said in a blog post but later, when Zomato contacted the hacker, they discovered a loophole in their security. The hacker removed the stolen content from dark web asking for a healthy bug bounty programme.
See also
- Waiter.com
- Just-Eat
- Foodpanda
References
External links
- Official website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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