Zomato makes its 5th international acquisition, nabs Italy-based startup

Restaurant search service, Zomato has acquired Italy's leading restaurant search service Cibando. Cibando will soon be integrated with Zomato, and over the next few months, users will be able to use Zomato for all major cities in Italy. This is Zomato's fifth acquisition in the recent months. Zomato acquired MenuMania in New Zealand, Lunchtime in Czech Republic, Obedovat in Slovakia, and Gastronauci in Poland recently.

Zomato will invest $6M in Italy over the next 2 years to grow the team and the business in the country. The transaction for Cibando's acquisition is expected to be completed over the next week.

Zomato, the online and mobile restaurant search service currently provides reviews for over 300,000 restaurants across 20 countries. The company also changed their logo recently.

Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato, said,

Cibando is one of the largest restaurant search services in Italy. Their existing traffic and user base will give us a great start as we launch Zomato in the country. And we love the Cibando team – I think we have a lot to learn from them about the local market. The entire Cibando team is joining Zomato and will lead the effort of building the business in Italy. We are really excited to be joining forces with them as we focus on being Italy's -- and the world's -- go-to restaurant search service.

Zomato's immediate focus will be on integrating Cibando into Zomato, and on building the most comprehensive restaurant search service for the Italian market. They also plan to scale up their teams in Rome and Milan to 30-40 full-time employees in the next three months

Cibando is also an important channel for restaurant owners who are looking to better convert their online visitors into paying clients. The company was founded by Guk Kim in 2010 who is the CEO of the company as well. He said,

Zomato has been expanding at a rapid pace, and we're excited about being part of that journey. Together, we will be able to offer detailed information for even more restaurants to our users in Italy and beyond, while also helping restaurant businesses connect and engage with customers effectively.

82,000 restaurants are listed on Cibando across various cities; it has professionally shot food and ambience photographs for a large number of these restaurants. The current Cibando team is 10 people strong; the new combined entity will grow to 30-40 people in the next three months; over time, in steady state, the Italy operation is expected to grow to 150-200 people across the top 6 cities.

Here's where Zomato stands in terms of numbers currently:

• Present in 20 countries; the company has widened the scope of its expansion and is aiming to launch in 15 more countries in the next year or so.
• Gets about 35 million visits per month across its website and mobile apps.
• More than 50% of traffic is on its mobile apps.