Zomato Story: The Reason Behind Its Success
In the exam of life, those will only succeed who have new creative ideas and think one step ahead of others. To succeed you must not be afraid of working hard and losing. One such similar stories are of online food delivery company Zomato.
The restaurant search service started as a Foodiebay and in 2010 they changed the name from Foodiebay to Zomato. Zomato started as a restaurant search and discovery platform. Now it also provides online delivery of food to its customer.
Where the idea of Zomato came from?
The thought of starting a company like Zomato came in Bain and company office. Deepinder Goyal was working as a management consultant and Pankaj Chaddah was working as Senior Analyst at Bain. While working at Bain, they saw a long line in office canteen to get a glance at a menu card.
One day they thought of finding a solution to this problem and the idea thought germinated in the form of Foodiebay. Foodiebay scanned the menu of the restaurants and posted it on the company private network. Soon the employees of Bains started using the website and thus saving their time and in return bringing traffic to the website.
Foodiebay started as intranet facility and after the success at the office, the service opened for the public. The first restaurant’s menu uploaded on the portal belongs to Hauz Khaz of Delhi.
Foodiebay started getting more and more popular, the number of users increased and so did the number of clients. So that’s when they thought of changing the name of Foodiebay to Zomato, as the name Zomato covered more operation and avoid the confusion with popular e-commerce company eBay.
Zomato Funding
The website of Zomato started getting steady traffic over a period of time order valtrex reviews which promoted founders for innovation. After the traffic started to grow, Zomato looked to building more easy access to browse a website.
Innovation comes at a cost, and Zomato needed funds to build a mobile application. A mobile application was the need of the hour for Zomato, to give easy access to customers but Zomato did not have enough funds.
Zomato needed funding from the investors and that’s when Sanjeev Bikhchandani of Naukri.com Stepped on. Sanjeev was fascinated with the idea of Zomato and he invested up to US$ 1 million through Info Edge (India).
In 2011, Zomato received a huge fund of US$ 3.5 million through the same investors. Info Edge (India) continued to invest in Zomato in the coming years also, it invested US$ 10 million in the year 2012. Investment has come from all quarters to Zomato, companies like Sequoia Capital, Vy Capital, and Temasek have also invested in Zomato. Info Edge (India) holds the majority of shares of Zomato.
Zomato Success Story
Zomato success can be attributed to its team members and the work they have put on the ground to create Zomato. Deepinder and Pankaj believed that hiring the right person was one of the most important criteria to succeed in the business.
Zomato Success Story is not built on one pillar, they created a business model which played its part in building the brand of Zomato. It also faced numerous challenges when it was starting. The main challenge for the founders was to list restaurants of all the important places of cities where people were likely to visit.
Zomato hired a team which would visit the cities and lists the restaurants. It was hard at the initial stages but as the squad member grew, Zomato was able to operate the situation better. Now, Zomato is Asia Largest Restaurants Guide.
