Zomato Case Study- About Zomato Company
When Zomato started, it aimed to become the best restaurant search and discovery platform.
It had the names of different restaurants, menus, costs, reviews, and other essential details. It offered in-depth information on more than 1.4 million restaurants across 23 countries.
Over the years, it has become a popular online food delivery platform. Now customers can order food from their favorite restaurants by using their website or app.
Zomato has many delivery executives who pick up the order from the eatery and deliver it to the customer’s address.
How was Zomato Started?
Zomato is an Indian group founded by two IIT graduates, Deepinder Goyal, and Pankaj Chaddah, in Delhi NCR in 2008.
Once Deepinder saw his colleagues ordering food from different restaurants. That was when Deepinder came up with bringing these restaurant menus online.
One day they noticed their colleagues standing in a long queue in the cafeteria waiting for lunch.
So they thought about how much time people could save if they did not have to wait and get their favorite food delivered to their doorstep whenever required.
It is how they started the online food delivery service under “FoodieBay” and renamed it “Zomato.” In the initial stage, FoodieBay listed restaurants in Delhi and NCR. But, they soon grew their business in other metro cities like Kolkata and Mumbai.
As FoodieBay started attracting more and more customers, the founders decided to revamp its name to appeal to audiences outside India too. So then they changed the name of FoodieBay to “Zomato.” By 2016, Zomato had its sophisticated app doing food deliveries from registered restaurants.
Zomato Business Model
The success of Zomato lies in its unique Business Model. Zomato is an app whose business model works around food supply online, providing knowledge, user reviews, and menus of partner restaurants. Here are some of the essential components of Zomato’s business model:
1. Customer segments- The customer segment of Zomato has three different components: Local restaurants, reviews, and users.
2. Zomato provisions- Zomato has created a well-designed valuation model for its food delivery services. Zomato Gold & Piggybank has enhanced the standard of services that Zomato offers.
3. Alliances of Zomato- New partnerships with several big names like Visa, Uber Taxi, and Paypal have improved the business model of Zomato.
This online food delivery app provides a discount to advertise its usage and improve its customer base, considering the tough competition in the market. It’s mainly a selling strategy. Zomato soon started its service in the Cloud Kitchen industry too.
Competitors of Zomato
With various new companies launched in the last decade, the food delivery industry has become one of the largest online platforms.
Thanks to companies like Zomato, Swiggy, Uber Eats, FoodPanda, etc., they are changing the food industry quickly.
The online food delivery system is booming in metros and Tier II and III cities. All credit goes to these significant apps in the market.
The online food delivery industry is rapidly evolving and attracts vast money. However, growing competition and unstable growth policies have resulted in few casualties.
Because of enormous losses, companies like TinyOwl and Eat Fresh had to shut their doors.
Even FoodPanda, a popular food delivery app with a presence in over 13 countries, has been attained several times, initially by Delivery Hero and followed by OLA.
However, the company is still struggling to maintain its position in the online food delivery industry.
Zomato Partnership Strategy
Zomato is continuously working with the government to ensure that its services run smoothly without any hindrance.
Furthermore, it makes sure to support millions of people who are part of their food delivery network by earning money to cover the loss if they have lost their money due to some crisis.
Zomato has always been a leader in identifying the importance of videos and using them to its benefit on the YouTube platform.
Zomato plays short, lively, and unskippable video ads on YouTube with a “call-to-action .” It is proven that video ads play an essential role in Zomato’s advertising strategy.
Zomato Digital Marketing Strategies
Zomato is active on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. It has 757K followers, 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and more than 737K followers on LinkedIn.
Zomato communicates with its customers by creating posts on popular subjects.
The brand is aware of its audiences, likes, and dislikes. As a result, it supports material that people love to share, discuss, and reconsider.
To engage customers online, it utilizes popular topics and publishes simple pictures.
During the 2016 Olympics, Zomato promoted its brand on Twitter. The brand used Olympic rings made of coffee and claimed they would receive the gold medal if drinking coffee were a sport.
Another hot subject that Zomato targeted was The “Pokemon Go” video game. Zomato started earning from that too. The brand used the famous Pikachu to promote its brand on Twitter.
Connecting with the customers by Zomato was aided by positing popular themes. Users possibly don’t want to contemplate too much while using social media. Individuals use social media to enjoy and view humorous content.
Zomato’s digital marketing strategies keep on getting adjusted with new trends emerging. They find new methods to attract customers’ attention. Currently, they are doing a fantastic job.
However, they will benefit considerably if they put forth a sustained effort.
These people are skilled enough to make the most of the Email marketing tool. One of the most innovative and effective strategies is Zomato’s email marketing.
Zomato keeps its customers loyal to its company by utilizing appealing subject lines and a drive to action.
The brand ran an email marketing campaign on Amazon Prime Video with the theme of the legendary series Mirzapur Season 2. Zomato used the subject lines from Mirzapur.
In addition, it created a CV for Biryani as a vital part of one of its most prominent email marketing methods. Food-related terms like, for example, “Curriculum Vitae of Biryani” was showcased by Zomato.
In addition, it used the CTA “hire immediately” instead of “order now.” It is the reason why Zomato’s email marketing strategy performed so well.
Regarding SEO, Zomato has put a lot of effort into this field. According to Ubersuggest data, Zomato ranks for around 7,544,348 keywords on June 2023. Its organic traffic is 77,874,441 users every month.
The company lists the top keywords in its niche and designs a webpage for those. This indicates to the search engine that these pages are apt for the user’s search query. It is a great strategy to ensure that your website ranks top.
As of June 2023, Zomato has 12,738, 685 backlinks from different high-authority domains. It, too, helps Zomato to rank higher.
They are active on Social Media too. Zomato has 829K followers on Instagram and around 1.5 M on Twitter.
Zomato Target Audience
Zomato’s target audience comprises people between 18 and 35 with smartphones and well-versed in using different apps.
It focuses on attracting two customers, one who prefers to eat out and another who wants to order food from outside and deliver it to their home. These groups frequently coincide.
The Zomato Gold program offers incentives for those who eat out and offers food delivery service for those who want the food delivered at home.
Individuals who work and want their food delivered to their office, students who live in hostels and need food, those who lack time to prepare their food, and those who occasionally enjoy eating outside under this group.
Digital Marketing Channels Used by Zomato
Zomato uses Google AdWords for its search ad campaigns. It targets terms like “Food,” “Restaurant names,” “Online food ordering,” and many others.
It focuses on attracting people who want food delivered to them. It also runs Google Display ads to target individuals on apps and websites from 3rd parties.
Influencer Marketing Strategy by Zomato
Zomato has advanced the “hyper-local marketing” idea by advertising its material in regional languages and contacting micro-influencers.
It, in turn, increases the credibility of Zomato by enabling them to connect with more and more audiences.
Zomato has focused on Influencer Marketing in its marketing strategy as it identifies its potential.
Whether micro or macro-influencer, Zomato is not afraid to move further and leverages its disrepute to expand its user base.
All of us are aware of Zomato’s humorous takes on different scenarios through its tweets.
Zomato offers content that will make its customers smile, no matter whatever issue they are dealing with currently or the one they encounter regularly.
Moreover, its humor spreads fast and has a powerful impact.
Memes play a significant role in social media, and the brand has mastered the “meme marketing” method as it recognizes its importance.
As a result, the food delivery company attracts a lot of organic traffic. Thanks to the content marketing strategies followed by the brand, which ultimately helps to increase its revenue.
Acquisitions
- Zomato has acquired 12 startups worldwide.
- In 2014, during July, Zomato made its initial acquisition by purchasing Menu-mania for an undisclosed amount.
- The company pursued other purchases, including obedovat.sk and lunchtime.cz, for US$3.25 million.
- In September 2014, the brand acquired a Poland-based restaurant search service, Gastronauci, for an undisclosed amount.
- In December 2014, it attained the Italian restaurant search service, Cibando.
- In 2015, it bought Urbanspoon, a Seattle-based food portal, for an estimated US $60 million.
- Other acquisitions of 2015 by Zomato include Mekanist in an all-money deal, MapleGraph, the Delhi-based startup that built MaplePOS, and NexTable, a restaurant and table reservation management platform.
- In 2016, it bought Sparse Labs, a logistics technology startup, and Runnr, a food delivery startup, in 2017.
- In September 2018, it bought TongueStun, a Bengaluru-based food e-marketplace, for around US$18 million in cash and stock deal.
- In December 2018, it bought a Lucknow-based startup, TechEagle Innovations, focusing on drones for an undisclosed amount. Zomato stated that the acquisition would assist in starting drone-based food delivery in India, establishing technology targeted toward a hub-to-hub delivery network.
- On 21st January 2020, Zomato bought its competitor Uber Eats’ in India, providing 10% of the total business to Uber Eats.
- On 29th June 2021, the company signed an agreement with Grofers to invest about US$120 million in the online grocery market by purchasing 9.3% stakes in the company.
- In 2022 during June, Zomato attained Blinkit for US$568 million in an all-stock deal.
Investors Leaving Zomato
Uber, which attained 7.8% of Zomato shares when Zomato bought its Indian subordinate of Uber Eats, left Zomato on 3rd August 22.
The shares were sold at around $392 million to protect Uber against the losses. ICICI Prudential Life and Fidelity purchased the Zomato stakes.
As per the reports published on 4th August 2022, Tiger Global sold half of its Zomato shares.
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