Meals on Wheels: Zomato
In the olden days when humans needed food they had to go around looking for it, on trees, in the ground, under water, and much more. Daylight was limited, food was scarce and life was tough. And now? Well all they need to do now is pick up their smartphones, browse through a selection of food menus crafted specifically to their taste, take their most favourite pick, load up their cart with tasty delights, and order, all the while enjoying the comfort of a cozy sofa in a home many kilometres away from where their food is being prepared.
This momentous feat has been made possible thanks to food delivery services whose sole purpose in life is to take care of your midnight belly rumbles, so that you can go to bed full and satiated, only to wake up wanting more. So let’s talk about one such magnificent service in today’s article, Zomato.
The story of Zomato is the story of a humble food review website gone truly Bizz-are. Started as Foodiebay in 2008, Zomato has become one of the most successful startups in India, with it’s estimated value as of February 2021 being 5.4 billion US Dollars! Today it rules the food delivery market in India, along with its biggest contender, and Twitter buddy, Swiggy. But how did it all begin?
Friends and business partners Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah had already been successfully running Foodiebay — which provided reviews for different food destinations, along with their menus and even recommendations for where you should grab your next bite to eat — for three years when one day they realised what the next steps for their website could be — a smartphone application! They had noticed a major flaw in their creation, that websites were slowly going out of fashion and were not the easiest things to access without a computer. They needed to make Foodiebay available on the go, so that it would be possible for people to make use of it and explore their food options wherever they went. They wanted Foodiebay to be “mobile” and so they tried to put it in every mobile phone around.
Thus, Foodiebay was revamped and renamed, and in 2010 Zomato was born. Ever since then it has come a long way, seen many ups, downs, and remodels but the fact stands, Zomato is one of the flagship companies that the Indian market is proud of.