Zomato, the online restaurant discovery app will start to take orders for food delivery in India, Techcrunch reported.
Zomato CEO and co-founder Deepinder Goyal told TechCrunch that he expects to reach 10,000 restaurants in India in a few months. “We have a sales team of around 300 in India and 5,000-odd advertisers… these partners know the volume we bring to them so it is quite easy for us to launch this [new service].”
Zomato wants to be the Uber for food, which is to say that the restaurant will manually accept each order before it is processed. Restaurants will be provided with an iPad with an app from Zomato that turns it into an order hotline.
Zomato will take a commission of 7-15% on each order, depending on customer feedback. A 5 star rating will mean a 7% commission fee for Zomato, while a 1 star rating will mean a 15% commission.
"Revenues are likely to more than double next fiscal with this new business," said Goyal, speaking to the Economic Times. Zomato will launch similar services in Dubai, Manila, Jakarta and Sydney soon after the Indian launch.
The food delivery space is seeing a lot of action lately – Yelp Inc bought online food-ordering service Eat24 for $134 million, Foodpanda acquired JustEat in India last week, one of seven food delivery startups bought across Asia on Thursday.
Zomato acquired U.S.-based rival Urbanspoon for about $50 million in January, and introduced cashless payments in Dubai earlier this month.