India’s Zomato Releases a Public API to Enable App Developers Build Better Local Apps

India’s leading food and restaurant guide, Zomato has released a public API, enabling app developers to leverage its restaurant database in their local apps. The API was private until today and was available to only select partners such as MapMyIndia, MakeMyTrip, and MyCityWay.

Using this API, developers can now offer all the features that Zomato is known for, be it 18000+ restaurant listings, location co-ordinates, reviews, discounts, photos and menus in their app. The start-up also claimed that this API will always be updated and real-time, since its own products use the same API.

It will also allow developers to search through restaurant listings based on a specific criteria and test out their requests in a API Sandbox provided by the start-up.

Deepinder Goyal, the founder and CEO of Zomato said to Penn-Olson:

We have been receiving content sharing requests from developers for a while and are very excited about releasing the public API. MapmyIndia, MakeMyTrip, MyCityWay, and Mate-on-go have already been using our API for a while and making it public opens up a world of possibilities. We would love to see and encourage developers to create innovative web and mobile applications using our content.

Zomato recently forayed into events in a bid to reposition itself as a premium lifestyle brand. But the company notes that the API is currently limited to its restaurant data. The events data will be added sometime in the near future.

The start-up had recently raised $3 million from Info Edge (India), following the initial round of $1 million, stating that the money will be used to scale its operations, increase the market reach, and enrich the user experience on both its web and mobile products.