ZootOut: A Case Of Similarity? "We are different from Burrp andZomato", says Founder

ZootOut differentiates itself on the basis of product innovation and revenue modelZomato and Burrp have a stranglehold over the market in India when it comes to restaurant reviews and recommendations. To take a bite off the pie, ZootOut, a hyper local recommendation search engine on food & lifestyle is making an appeal. We got in touch with Cofounder Subrat Kar to know the differentiating factor.

"Instead of providing menus, we are providing the specialty of restaurants. Suppose that you're looking for a place in the city to have a burger, we will filter the best search results for you where you can hog on burgers. We also facilitate the users to put the specialty or famous dishes of restaurants and after verifying, we put it on the website", explains Subrat.

Current Outreach

ZootOut launched the beta version on 26^th Jan, 2012 in 2 cities and then added 4 more Indian cities. As of now, ZootOut is present in Indore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Chennai, Kolkota, Chandigarh, Kochi and Goa. By end of Febrary, few other cities would be added.

ZootOut also plans to have offline presence in cities. Currently, its offline presence can be felt in Indore.

About the Founders

ZootOut is a bootstrapped venture, cofounded by Subrat, Manish and Sukrat, who've all had previous startup experience. Sukrat previously started Khaopiyo.com, a food guide and Manish ran a consumer driven discount card startup in Indore. Apart from the trio, ZootOut has a small team dedicated to look into the technology.

Revenue Model

ZootOut will definitely target banner advertisements of restaurants, but they also have a different revenue stream charted out. "Right now we are experimenting on it in Indore. This is a mobile + cloud based product for restaurants which will give real time discounts of restaurants as well as the product will help restaurants to run their customer loyalty programs", says Subrat. ZootOut has taken up a steep challenge by positioning themselves in the segment but as they say, there's always room at the top.

Marketing and Expansion

"Right now we aren't focusing on marketing. We're only looking at a few viral campaigns. But yes we do have a good marketing plan further down the line. We are launching in Mumbai and Delhi shortly while we've plans to launch our product in Singapore, Dubai, Malaysia, Philipines and Hongkong by March", says Subrat.

It'll be interesting to see how ZootOut battles it out. Check out their service here.

- Jubin Mehta