Zomato raises $60M worth of firepower from Temasek and Vy Capital
Zomato, the restaurant search and discovery app, announced today that it has raised $ 60 million in a fresh round of funding that is being led by Singapore investment company, Temasek, with participation from existing investor Vy Capital. It will use the investment to further grow its new business verticals. This takes Zomato’s total funding to ~$ 225 million which comes from a close set of four investors - Info Edge, Sequoia India, Vy Capital, and now Temasek.
Just last week, Zomato made strategic investments in Gurgaon-based Pickingo, and Mumbai-based Grab, both hyperlocal delivery players to enable last-mile delivery for restaurants, including dine-in-only restaurants that don't otherwise deliver. Earlier today, Zomato also announced the launch of its Whitelabel Platform, a full suite of technologies for restaurants to run their business on the Internet.
Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato, said, “We will use this round to make investments in our new businesses such as online ordering, table reservations, point of sales, and our newly-launched Whitelabel platform. With this round, and with some of our markets turning profitable recently, Zomato is well capitalised for at least two years. We are also stoked to have Temasek partner with us and are looking forward to building one of the largest food-tech companies in the world.”
Zomato employs over 3000 people across 22 countries and over the last seven years, it has managed to put together detailed restaurant information for 1.4 million restaurants. Zomato claims that it gets 90 million visits across its web and mobile platforms every month. With the last few steps, the company has moved towards profitability. Globally, Zomato has launched their online ordering services in the UAE, and will soon be rolling it out to Australia and South Africa. Over the next few months, it’ll be launching the table reservations service Zomato Book, point-of-sale system Zomato Base, and rolling out their Whitelabel platform across geographies.
The food tech business in India is very crowded with lots of players and Zomato got into areas like food delivery later than other players, but it still holds an upper hand because of its massive user base. Beneath the large consumer base, Zomato now powers a lot of foundation for restaurants and has the clout to build strong monetization channels.
