Zomato had acquired Urbanspoon last month.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Zomato, the restaurant search and discovery website thatacquired Urbanspoon for $52 million last month, is expanding its gastronomic business model to include food ordering.
The New Delhi-based company plans to take home delivery orders in India beginning on March 16. The utility will launch with an initial partner-base of 2,000 restaurants, but Zomato chief executive and co-founder Deepinder Goyal told TechCrunch that he expects the service to support 10,000 restaurants across the subcontinent within a few months of its launch.
As opposed to most online food ordering services, Zomato is utilizing a system where a partnered restaurant has to manually accept each Zomato user’s order before it can be processed. The Uber-esque practice will differentiate Zomato from competitors that simply serve as an automated waypoint for customer orders.
In order to facilitate the transition to its new system order system, Goyal said Zomato will be providing free iPads to participating restaurants, each of which will come pre-loaded with an app that effectively transforms the tablet into a Zomato-powered terminal for connecting to hungry customers.
Zomato plans to generate revenue by extracting a cut from each transaction, but the exact amount of the fee will vary from order to order based on each customer’s mandated review of their meal. If the order garners a five-star rating, Zomato will take a nominal 7.5 percent commission, while poorer feedback can see the figure rise to a more significant 15 percent.
While there are no immediate plans for Zomato to adopt the food delivery model in any of the other 21 countries where it currently operates, Goyal said his company is planning “an aggressive roll out in other markets where we are strong” once the newest facet of his crown jewel has firmly caught India’s collective eye.
Dubai, Australia, and Indonesia are likely to be among the second wave of adopters once Zomato’s new modus branches out.