Malavika Velayanikal · · 2 min readSequoia-backed Zomato buys Polish startup Gastronauci, eyes Malaysia, Vietnam next
Indian restaurant finder site Zomato is on a roll: it just announced its fourth acquisition in three months. Poland’s restaurant search service Gastronauci, founded in 2007 by Ola Lazar, is the latest company to be gobbled up by the six-year-old Indian startup.
A month ago, Zomato acquired two food guides, the Czech Republic’s Lunchtime.cz and Slovakia’s Obedovat.sk, for a total of US$3.25 million. And in July, Zomato made its first acquisition, New Zealand’s MenuMania for an undisclosed sum.
The three acquisitions are strategic moves to establish Zomato’s presence as a leader in the restaurant discovery space in Central and Eastern Europe. With the region under its belt, Zomato is eyeing other markets.
Pramod Rao, Director, International Operations at Zomato, tells Tech in Asia:
In Europe, we are looking at Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Belgium as potential markets to enter into. Globally, we are targeting to expand into 10 other markets in the coming months which will include Canada, Ireland, Malaysia, Vietnam, Lebanon, and Columbia.
Zomato has a validated product and the expansion into new countries mostly involves market reach and some customization.
Pramod Rao says that there is a strong overlap in Zomato and Gastronauci’s business models, but some features will be customized. “We will work closely with the Gastronauci team to integrate their product and content with Zomato over the coming months. For example, discovery of lunch/daily menus is one area which we will cater to more prominently in Poland and in Central and Eastern Europe.”
Founded in 2008 by two IIT Delhi grads, Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, Zomato is now present in 16 countries. It claims to serve over 25 million monthly visitors globally.
Last November, Zomato raised US$37 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital, which has been prescient in identifying listing-related opportunities in India like Zomato and JustDial. Earlier, Zomato had bagged US$10 million in February 2013, US$2.3 million in 2012, US$5 million in 2011, and US$750,000 in 2010.
Editing by Terence Lee
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