A few years ago, if you wanted to order food from a restaurant, you had to find the phone number of the restaurant, place your order, and then keep waiting for the food. Dining out too, was limited to known restaurants or those recommended by friends. Even checking the menu of a restaurant was nearly impossible.
Nearly every one of us faced these problems; including two individuals, Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, who decided to take the matter into their own hands. They chose to provide a solution to this problem with the help of technology. This led to the birth of Zomato, a global juggernaut in food delivery and restaurant aggregator services.
The beginning
Both Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah were working at Bain & Company, Delhi. During these days, they realised, to get a glance at the menu, many people from their office had to queue in the cafeteria. This is when they choose to solve this problem, and 'Foodiebay' was born.
Foodiebay had the softcopies of menu cards,that were available on its website. Soon everyone in their office was a daily user of their site as it saved time. This, in turn, brought high traffic on their website. With the growing popularity, they decided to expand Foodiebay and made it available to everyone in Delhi.
The rebranding
Within the short span of nine months, Foodiebay not only became popular in Delhi, but it also expanded to Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune. After two successful years, Deepinder and Pankaj decided to rebrand 'Foodiebay', calling it 'Zomato' to make it more captivating and easy to remember.
International success
With support from its investors, Zomato accelerated their growth and expanded its reach to overseas market. Zomato by 2013 started its operations in the UK, UAE, South Africa, Qatar, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and Brazil.
The disruption
Zomato after having a monopoly in the restaurant directory field, and table booking for a few years, in 2016 decided to disrupt food delivery services across the country, with the launch of their own delivery service. And, within no time Zomato became the favourite go-to app to order food online, clocking more than 14 million monthly orders.
The future
In the year, 2017 Zomato claimed it had become profitable in all the 24 countries where it operates. Also, with the launch of 'Zomato Gold' -a membership program that offers complimentary food and drinks to users, and the success of food delivery, Zomato is growing at an exponential rate.
The conclusion
In 2018, Zomato completed ten successful years. Today, Zomato is a household name. It is present in over 10,000 cities across the globe, with over 1.4 million active restaurants and serves more than 70 million users every month.
Zomato has disrupted the food delivery services across the world with its hard work, dedication and love for food. With the success story of Zomato, we learn that hard work, commitment and passion can lead the way to help you achieve your goals at anytime you wish to succeed.
