India’s Zomato Goes Jozi, Launches in South Africa’s Largest City

Just a few weeks after expanding to the Philippines to shake up the restaurant listings market there, India’s Zomato has now launched in Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa. The site already has 2,000 restaurants listed in Johannesburg – also nicknamed Jozi – replete with addresses, photos, and scanned menus. Next, it’s up to users to add user-generated reviews of all those dining establishments.

This marks Zomato’s first move into Africa. It seems to be the strategy of the New Delhi-based startup: to edge into a new region in just one spot, and then look to expand outwards from there. The same happened in Southeast Asia with the Manila listings, and in Europe with the London foodie guides.

All the new Johannesburg content is available in the Zomato apps for BlackBerry, iOS, and Android, with other platforms being updated later. CEO and co-founder Deepinder Goyal explained the move in today’s announcement:

We’ve been growing aggressively over the past few months, and South Africa was always on our minds. The market has great potential, with lots of restaurants, and a high internet and smartphone penetration. Moreover, it’s a vibrant country where people are passionate about food. We’ll also be launching in Cape Town soon, and look forward to South Africa becoming a key business hub for us.

The only site that was doing a decent job of restaurant listings before Zomato’s entry was the homegrown Dining-Out site – but that doesn’t have any apps.

Get the Zomato apps from its homepage.

Started in 2008, Zomato now has over 11 million users on the site per month.