New Delhi, Nov 6 (IANS): Restaurant search service Zomato Wednesday announced a fresh round of funding of $37 million from Sequoia Capital and existing investors Info Edge, taking its total funding to over $53 million.
Zomato also announced the launch of its services in three new countries - Brazil (Sao Paulo), Turkey (Istanbul, Ankara), and Indonesia (Jakarta) - where it will be available in local languages as well - Portuguese, Turkish, and Bahasa Indonesia, respectively.
In addition, Zomato has also expanded its services in Britain from three cities to five, with the inclusion of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said: “This is an exciting phase for us. We believe that we can improve restaurant search with our rich content-driven model. This financing will help us develop a product that will change the way people look for restaurant recommendations around them.”
“At Sequoia Capital, we have been championing the cause of Indian companies globalizing at a rapid pace. Many of our services and enterprise software investments are already global category leaders. Zomato is the first Indian consumer internet company to build a significant international footprint,” said Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors.
Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder of Info Edge said: “Zomato is one of the finest consumer Internet businesses to come out of India.”
“Zomato believes that menus, pictures, and maps are as important as reviews when it comes down to a customer’s decision-making process about where to eat. It follows a rich-content approach to restaurant search, and has a team that collects menu cards, clicks pictures and gets mapping information on its own. Reviews and ratings on Zomato are provided by users,” a company statement said.
Headquartered in New Delhi and started five years ago, Zomato employs over 600 people across 35 cities in 11 countries.
Over the next two years, Zomato plans to expand to 22 more countries across Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia and the Americas.
Globally, the most valuable company in this space is Yelp with a market cap in excess of $4.5 billion.