Zomato raises 37-mil, now caters to Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey

Indian-based online restaurant guide Zomato is not slowing down in its expansion plans. After launching in South Africa earlier this year it has now extended its reach to Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey, hot off the back of a new round of funding to the value of US$37-million.

The new round of funds sees global VC firm Sequoia Capital come on board as a new investor, joining existing investor Info Edge which previously injected US$16.5-million into the dining guide service. The new round takes Zomato’s total funding to over US$53-million.

Zomato, which provides key restaurant information such as menus, geo-coded maps, photographs, user ratings and reviews has also furthered its South African footprint to Durban, taking its total number of SA cities to four.

Pooja Khanna, Zomato’s SA CEO, told Ventureburn that including Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town, Zomato now lists over 5000 restaurants in South Africa thanks to the almost 500 addition from Durban. The service receives about 200 000 unique visitors each month from South Africa alone.

Zomato now operates in 11 countries, and Khanna confirms that the company’s goal is to expand into another 22 in the next the two years. Zomato’s presence in Brazil (Sao Paulo), Indonesia (Jakarta) and Turkey (Istanbul and Ankara) also marks the guide’s first foray into local languages other than English — now supporting Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesia and Turkish respectively.

The icing on the cake is that Zomato also expanded its services within the UK from three to five cities, now servicing Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Zomato feels that its rich-content approach to restaurant search helps when a customer is making a dining-choice, because it is not just the reviews that count, but also the menus, pictures and maps that inform the decision.

Menus are updated every three months across all 160 000 restaurants listed on Zomato, and users can access all information for free on the website or through Zomato’s mobile apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry.