Zomato, an online food ordering and restaurant finding platform, started off as just an idea. An IIT Delhi student, Deepinder Goyal was always on the lookout for new places to eat. What started off as a collection of menus from a small list of restaurants has today grown into a massive conglomerate which is available for people to use in 24 countries! Officially launched in July 2008 with only 1,200 menus, Zomato as a business grew so quickly, it had more than 2,000 menus on its database by the end of 2008! Co Founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddha, the journey of Zomato has been a dream story. Through the years, Zomato has grown by leaps and bounds and today, it is only fitting that we take a look at its growth over the years!

Always keep strategizing

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When Deepinder Goyal started Zomato, he had a single aim in life: to provide people a common platform where they could look for restaurants. When the idea took off so quickly and instantly, Deepinder realised he had to streamline the process of how he was collecting data about restaurants. The more Zomato started getting accepted, the more Goyal streamlined the process. His business model was simple. Every time Zomato starts operating in a new city, a single person is assigned for collecting data about the most popular and accessible restaurants and clubs in the area. The data is then sent to a centralised team in Delhi. The Company is divided in a way that every team has a specific job to do. With advertisements on the website acting as the revenue format for Zomato, Goyal created a model which not only ensures a revenue share system, but also in branding the restaurants partnering with the platform! In short, he created a win win situation for the partners as well as his Company.

Keep Expanding

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Soon after Goyal entered the food tech industry, he realised, in order to stay on top and not just stay afloat, he had to keep expanding his business. Right from the moment it launched, Goyal has been expanding his baby with every move he makes. Apart from launching the Zomato Gold and the Zomato PickUp app, Zomato has expanded into other areas of business as well.

One of the things which makes Zomato stand out from the other food tech startups is its ability to expand into areas its competitors did not. Furthermore, focusing on extremely high quality products, Zomato ensured people look at its quality first and then everything else. The year 2014 saw Zomato acquire not one, but 4 acquisitions of various food tech startups. Six months later, the Company started expanding to places outside India (Sweden, Denmark and Germany, to name a few!) It is important to note here, one of the reasons Zomato grew so much is, it always studies its competition and stays one step ahead, no matter what.

A Trust In His Employees

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One of the primary reasons Deepinder Goyal grew Zomato to this point of success is because of the amount of trust and faith he places in his employees. An underlying growth factor for Zomato is, not only does it gives its customers the best, it also instills confidence in the employees on its roster. If you look at the track record of all the employees on the Zomato roster, one can see that people work up to 12 hours a day without complaining or making a fuss. In fact, even if you offer the top people twice or thrice the amount of money they earn, no one will leave. Why? Simply because Deepinder instilled a trust factor into his employees and gave them growth like no one else did. If this is not a display of undying faith in Zomato, then what is?

In a span of 11 years, Zomato has grown from being merely an idea to being valued at over $ 1  billion. Securing investments from more than a series of interesting investors, Zomato is, today, one of the most used and visited food tech platforms. Running neck to neck with Swiggy, its primary competitor, Zomato more than proved its worth as a force of nature!