Zomato extends restaurant search in SA

·6 Nov 2013

Having launched in South Africa in April, restaurant search app Zomato has now extended its operations from Joburg, Pretoria and Cape Town to Durban.

“South Africa has been one of our best performing markets,” said Zomato SA CEO, Pooja Khanna.

“The market has great potential with lots of restaurants and a growing Internet and smartphone penetration. The response from Johannesburg, Cape Town and Pretoria has been overwhelming, and we expec the trend to continue with Durban.”

This comes on the back of the announcement that the popular app has upped its funding to US$53 million, having secured an additional US$37 million from Sequoia Capital and existing investors Info Edge.

On top of boosting its operations in South Africa, the company has also expanded internationally, launching services in Brasil, Indonesia and Turkey, with additional cities in the UK.

Zomato is a restaurant search application available online and via mobile app that offers a “content-rich” approach to dining, featuring menues, pictures, maps, as well as reviews and ratings from Zomato users.

The company updates menues every three months for over 160,000 restaurants across 11 countries, it said.

According to Zomato, the company plans to expand its operations to 22 more countries across Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas – challenging industry leader, Yelp.

Zomato gets over 15 millions vistis across online and mobile platforms a month, it said, with over half of the traffic seen originating from the mobile app.