Review || Zomato (Version 2)

Another year, another day, another review …

Writing a review after almost four years and many updates, I observe that zomato.com has now become the go-to place for millions of foodies, like me.

Looking back, all I can say is that Zomato has had quite an exciting journey:

1. Platform – The maintenance of both, the web and the mobile platform has required tremendous amount of work by the team (I assume). Additionally, Zomato has, in course of time, become the 5^th most frequently used app in India, a stature that probably was unimaginable by the critics at one point of time (Source: http://yourstory.com/2014/12/popular-indian-apps-found/)

2. Growth –From a company perspective, Zomato has grown tremendously by acquisitions. Though the story started with Zomato expanding operations in Dubai, The Philippines, South Africa, etc., in course of time, they’ve adopted the strategy of growing by acquiring the players that have had a high volume of customers on the platform. The focus has been to target European markets and supposedly “smaller fish” to build a base of hundreds of thousands of customers before the “big fish” (Read: US!) could be attacked.

And then it happened! Zomato acquired UrbanSpoon and gained base in USA, Canada and Australia and brought the company in the game with other rivals such as Yelp, Zagat and OpenTable. It all sounded like, as it is called, “Roar of a lion!”

3. User Interface – The UI has seen so many changes that I’ve lost track – From reviews to ratings, from talking about yourself to replicating your social network on Zomato while tagging your friends, from being a foodie to a super foodie, from #zomatoshake to recommendations based on restaurants reviewed in the past by my friends or me, Zomato has come a long long way in making life more interactive, yet more engaging for customers. Mind you – Keeping things simple, interactive and engaging is a difficult thing to do!

4. Social Media Strategy – Their Facebook posts come once in a while but when they come, they create a storm that none can stop. The twitter handle gives you a feel of talking to an old pal. Their Pinterest page is phenomenal albeit very little activity. But, it’s the blog that steals the show!

Additionally, Zomato ends up earning a lot of #respect with the way they handle their themes (#FoodieFriday, India according to a Delhi Foodie, etc.), customer queries as well as the pot-shots that others take on them (Amazon-Zomato twitter war)

5. Customer Experience – No matter how hard I try, I don’t think that I can fully describe the sheer pleasure of using the Zomato app due to the customer experience. If you’re hungry and you don’t have home-made food, what do you do? You go for a dine-out or you get food delivered at home. Zomato has launched Zomato Order that caters to the food delivery business. If you thought that this would make the app heavy, don’t worry because it has been unbundled from the main (dine-out) app. If you think that the main app contains too much information in one go, considering they would like to highlight the home delivery service, take a look at the new 7^th bday version of the Zomato app J

Thus, the state has become such that when you think of food, you think of Zomato. (Reminds me of, “Whenever you think color, think of us. Jensen & Nicholson.” :P)

6. Transport? If you wish to visit a restaurant for a dine-out and need a vehicle to do so, gone are the days of switching between apps and biting your fingernails because Zomato now has a tie-up with Uber to take care of this.

7. Reservation? Next, you want to book a table to ensure your experience doesn’t get spoilt? Tadaa! Here’s Zomato Book to help you.

8. Payments? Tapping in on the growing trend of going cashless, Zomato has introduced mobile payments (Zomato Cashless), through the app for its customers in Dubai (Feb 2015).

Regarding launching the service in India, the 2 step verification mandated by Reserve Bank of India forces companies like Zomato to either tie up with a mobile wallet, like Uber tied up with PayTM, or suspend such plans for now, something that Zomato is doing.

9. What if I have a restaurant of my own? Lastly, if you’re someone who is into the food business and want to leverage Zomato, they have something to offer to you too – Zomato for Business

I understand that my review comes across as a post by someone who’s trying to advertise the business but I’m not, I’m simply awestruck with the speed with which things are happening at Zomato and how Deepinder & Pankaj are taking every step without compromising the quality of their product. What is most important is that they do not shy away from understanding, accepting and fixing their mistakes – the Events section being a fitting example.

Lastly, a look at their timeline (just for the fun of it!) -