India’s restaurant search engine Zomato.com has launched in five new cities, in a move to fulfill its global expansion plans and make restaurant search convenient. The new cities include Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and Porto Alegre in Brazil; and Hamilton, in New Zealand.
With this new launch, Zomato makes it presence felt in 12 international cities since its Series D round.
Speaking about the move in a statement, Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Zomato said – “Alongside developing a better product experience, global expansion has been a key focus area over the past year for us. The latest round of funding has given us the muscle we needed to meet our aggressive expansion goals. Both Brazil and New Zealand have been very exciting markets so far, where users and restaurant owners alike have taken to Zomato really well. We plan to further our expansion in Brazil over the next six months, and also have 22 new countries in the pipeline for the next two years, across Europe, Asia and the Americas.”
Apart from the 12 international cities, Zomato is now present in a total of 40 cities across 11 countries, on the web, and on mobile for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry platforms.
Founded in 2008 in India, Zomato has over 197,000 restaurants in 40 cities across 11 countries with full, up to date menus, photos and geocoded coordinates plus user reviews, ratings and the ability to follow other users’ recommendations on Zomato. The engine first entered the Brazil market last month with its launch in São Paulo, where it now claims 150,000 monthly visitors, has info on 13,000 restaurants in São Paulo, 10,000 restaurants in Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Salvador and Porto Alegre and several others including South Africa. Zomato plans to launch in seven more cities in Brazil by June 2014.
In New Zealand, the platform launched in July 2013 and has so listed over 360 restaurants.