Global Online Restaurant Search Zomato, first named as Foodiebay, started its year with another acquisition and this is considered to be the biggest to date. According to The Economic Times, Sequoia Capital and Info Edge backed restaurant discovery service provider announced that they have acquired IAC-owned restaurant guide portal Urbanspoon.
This is Zomato's sixth acquisition of different restaurant search service providers over the last six months, in which, includes New Zealand-based MenuMania, Czech Republic-based Lunchtime.cz, Slovakia-based Obedovat.sk, Poland's Gastronauci and Italy's Cibando.
The acquisition spree of the six-year-old Indian startup reportedly makes it apparent that it wants to dominate a wider market and desires to give a tight competition to world's largest market listing company Yelp. Other known competitors that Zomato needs to look out for are TripAdvisor, Google, YP and Foursquare, to name a few.
The terms of the sealed deal was undisclosed however an unnamed source of Techcrunch said that Zomato paid an all-cash amount of $50 million to $60 million.
Urbanspoon acquisition will expand Zomato's coverage in additional 22 countries that will surely increase their restaurant exposure, Smart Company reported. This move by Zomato will also double their web traffic to over 80 million visits per month, as their major source of revenue depends on online advertisements (through apps and its website). It is said that their listings will also increase over one million as it enters the U.S. market.
Currently, Zomato is considered as the most accurate restaurant search data provider as it always hire local residents to scan one's restaurant menu, create recommendations and even take photos.
The Indian start up company is also rumored to be testing an in-house payment platform that will first land on Dubai, and once it is a success, it will then be presented to additional Zomato markets.