Zomato is an online service that provides information on home delivery, dining-out, cafes and nightlife in cities of India and 18 other countries. The service was founded in 2008.
With the purchase of Urbanspoon, the content that it provided prior to its purchase will eventually be absorbed into Zomato, while the Urbanspoon brand will fade away after a given transition period. Zomato wants to launch their new integrated app in North America in March.
Zomatyo was able to acquire Urbanspoon after receiving $60 million in funding from Sequoia Capital. Most of the money was spent on the acquisition to enter the North American market. So far, the restaurant search provider has raised over $100 million so far. The first to report the news last night was by Geekwire, ahead of the embargo.
The purchase of Urbanspoon ends Zomato’s purchase spree, in which they had bought restaurant verticals in places like New Zealand, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy and Turkey. Zomato pointed out that Urbanspoon “will more than double Zomato’s web traffic from 35 million visits per month to over 80 million.”
With Urbanspoon under their belt, their restaurant listings will increase roughly 700,000 globally from about 300,000 to over 1,000,000. Zomato’s direct rivals will include Yelp, TripAdvisor, YP, Foursquare, Google, as well as others in the restaurant category. This purchase of Urbansquare was a smart move for Zomato, as restaurants are the number one local search category in the US.
Below is a September 2014 interview of Goyal following Zomato’s acquisition of Polish site Gastronauci: