Zomato, India’s Leading Food and Lifestyle Guide, Raises $3 Million from Info Edge (India)

Hot on the heels of adding events to its repertoire, Zomato, one of India’s leading food and restaurant guides, has raised Rs 13.5 crores ($3 million) from Info Edge (India) Ltd.

This follows the initial round of Rs 4.7 crores ($1 million) which was raised in August 2010, to fund its product development, sales and marketing efforts.

Now the start-up – which is trying to reposition itself from its previous Foodiebay.com avatar to a premium lifestyle brand – announced that it has seen an overall strong growth over the past year, doubling its coverage from five to ten cities and increasing the number of restaurants listed from 7,000 to 18,000.

The portal has also launched its mobile apps on all major smartphone platforms including iOS, Android and Symbian and currently enjoys a healthy userbase of 100,000 users and a million monthly visitors.

Explaining that this new capital infusion will be used to scale up Zomato’s operations and drive both its existing and new verticals, Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato.com said to Penn-Olson:

We plan to use these funds to further scale our operations, enrich user experience on both our web and mobile products, and increase our reach in the market. We have recently moved into events and an e-commerce section is in the pipeline. The second round of funding will also go into building a strong foundation for these new verticals.

Info Edge Founder and Executive Vice Chairman Sanjeev Bhikhchandani said to Penn-Olson:

Zomato.com is one of India’s fastest growing consumer internet portals. The satisfaction levels on both sides of the value chain (consumer and merchant) are very high – a testimony to the great product made for the consumers and the value seen in it by the merchants. We see immense potential in their current model, in their future plans and the capability of the team to execute it well.