Zomato

Zomato was founded as FoodieBay in 2008 by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah who worked for Bain & Company. The website started as a restaurant listing and recommendation portal. They renamed the company Zomato in 2010 as they were unsure if they would "just stick to food" and also to avoid a potential naming conflict with eBay.With the introduction of .xxx domains in 2011, Zomato also launched zomato.xxx, a site dedicated to food porn.In 2011, it expanded across India to Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad. In 2012, it expanded operations internationally in several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Qatar, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, and South Africa. In 2013, expanded to in New Zealand, Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia, with website and apps available in Turkish, Portuguese, Indonesian and English languages. In April 2014, it launched in Portugal, which was followed by launches in Canada, Lebanon and Ireland in 2015.In January 2015, Zomato acquired Seattle-based restaurant discovery portal Urbanspoon, which led to the firm's entry into the United States and Australia. This U.S.-expansion brought Zomato into direct competition with similar models such as Yelp and Foursquare. In an effort to expand its business beyond restaurant listing, Zomato piloted an online payments facility in partnered restaurants in Dubai called Zomato Cashless in February 2015. This was discontinued a few months later.Zomato started its food delivery service in India in 2015, initially partnering with companies such as Delhivery and Grab to fulfill deliveries from restaurants that did not have its own delivery service. In April 2015, Zomato acquired the American online table reservation platform NexTable, which was subsequently renamed as Zomato Book. In January 2016, it launched Zomato Book's table reservation facility on its application in India. In April 2015, Zomato acquired cloud-based point of sale company MapleGraph Solutions, and in April 2016, it launched its own Android point of sale system for restaurants called Zomato Base, which was built on MaplePOS.

In February 2017, the firm announced plans to launch Zomato Infrastructure Services, a cloud kitchen infrastructure service to help partner restaurants expand their presence without incurring any fixed costs. Later that year, it introduced a paid membership program called Zomato Gold using which subscribers could get offers and discounts on dining and food delivery at Zomato's partner restaurants.In February 2018, Zomato became a unicorn startup after raising US$200 million from Ant Financial at a valuation of US$1.1 billion. Later that year, it shut down operations of Zomato Infrastructure Services. In 2018, it acquired WOTU and rebranded it as Hyperpure to supply food ingredients such as grains, vegetables and meat to restaurants from its warehouses. In December 2018, Zomato launched its annual multi-city food and entertainment carnival called Zomaland.In September 2019, the firm laid off almost 10% of its workforce tending to back-end activities like customer service, merchant and delivery partner support functions.In April 2020, due to a fall in food delivery and a rising demand for online grocery ordering amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the firm began delivering groceries and essentials under a service named Zomato Market in 80+ cities across India. In April 2020, Zomato introduced contactless dining at its partner restaurants. In May 2020, Zomato also began delivering alcohol in West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha after obtaining the permission of the governments in these states. In May 2020, Zomato further laid off 520 employees due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zomato closed operations of Zomato Market in June 2020 as demand for food delivery recovered and grocery delivery business "was not scalable". In April 2021, it pulled out of alcohol delivery service citing poor unit economics and scalability.In July 2021, Zomato went public, opening its Initial public offering at a valuation of over US$8 billion.Zomato reentered grocery delivery space with a pilot launch in July 2021, allowing users to place orders from neighbourhood stores under a marketplace model. It shut down the service in September 2021.In April 2022, Zomato launched a pilot of 10-minute food delivery in Gurgaon called Zomato Instant. In June 2022, Zomato announced the acquisition of quick-commerce company Blinkit for US$568 million.In August 2022, Zomato discontinued its pro membership, canceling new sign-ups and renewals. In addition, Zomato launched a new service in Gurgaon and South Delhi called Intercity Legends that allows users to order dishes from famous restaurants in other cities and have them delivered to their doorstep in a few days. In November 2022, Zomato introduced Zomato Pay feature, which allowed users to make payments at partner restaurants and avail offers, and partner restaurants to promote themselves.