1

XAVIER INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

BHUBANESWAR

BRAND PROFILE OF

Submitted to : Prof. M N Tripathi

Submitted by : Aman Pachisia(uemf16003)
Ankur Mittal(uemf16004)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to express a whole-hearted gratitude to all those who have

helped with
the report or have been associated with the report in any which way and
made it
a worth-while experience.
We sincerely thank Prof. M N Tripathi, who we cannot thank enough for
having given
us the opportunity and his total support for working on such a project.
We are greatly indebted to our batch mates for having shared their
invaluable contacts
with us which went a long way in the successful completion of our report.
Thank you.

Contents
Zomato : An Indian startup acquiring the
world...........................................................................................................5
About
Zomato............................................................................................................................................
...................6
Mission &
Vision...............................................................................................................................................
.............7
Milestone.........................................................................................................................................
.............................7
Business
Model...............................................................................................................................................
..............8
Value
Proposition.......................................................................................................................................
...................9
Customers.......................................................................................................................................
..............................10
Value
Chain...............................................................................................................................................
....................11
Zomatos Scope of
Activities.........................................................................................................................................
11
Zomato
supply..............................................................................................................................................
................12
Zomato
consultancy......................................................................................................................................
...............12

Zomato
Partners...........................................................................................................................................
................13
Social Media
Strategy...........................................................................................................................................
........14
Content
Marketing........................................................................................................................................
...............17
Business
Aim..................................................................................................................................................
..............23
Swot................................................................................................................................................
.............................28
GCM
Matrix..............................................................................................................................................
....................29
Portor Diamond
Matrix..............................................................................................................................................
..30
Current Business
Strategy...........................................................................................................................................
.31
Innovation at
Zomato............................................................................................................................................
.......32
Major
Competitors.....................................................................................................................................
..................35
Major
Acquisition.......................................................................................................................................
..................36
Three Problems that were at
Zomato..........................................................................................................................36
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................
.............................38
5

Zomato: An Indian Startup acquiring the

world

Zomato initially named as Foodiebay was started by Mr. Deepinder Goyal. It

is a restaurant searching platform providing in-depth details with
autonomous reviews and ratings. Foodiebay, the initial name was changed
to Zomato in November 2010 to increase their reach among people.

Zomato is a restaurant discovery platform providing comprehensive menus,

reviews and contact details for restaurants in 21 cities across the world.
Territories include India, USA, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Qatar, the
Philippines, South Africa and now London. Founded in New Delhi in 2008,
Zomato employs approximately 1000 staff over the globe.

About Zomato
Founded in 2008, Zomato has raised over $613 million to date,
most recently a $50 million round from Info Edge, Sequoia
Capital and Vy Capital in April, which valued the company at $1
billion.
The company is expecting revenues to triple this fiscal year, with
the various income streams that it has introduced over the past
few months.
"We see a lot of opportunity in terms of product evolution on both
the consumer as well as the merchant end. We have been ahead
of the curve building mobile-first products in the restaurant
search space for a while now and are extensively focusing on
mobile as a company. Cashless and online ordering are great
examples of our mobile-first products," said Goyal.
"With the growth of mobile-first and mobile-only users in India
especially, we see a lot of potential for our product. In the long
term, we want to own the communication platform between
restaurants and customers and want our users to have access to
all kinds of restaurant information around them so they can make
an informed decision before a meal."

Mission and Vision

Zomatos mission is to ensure nobody has a bad meal.
Zomatos vision is to be the global platform when someone
is looking for food locally.
The said mission and vision is achieved by:
o Helping people discover great places around them.
o Building amazing experiences around dining.
o Enabling restaurants to create amazing experiences.
To expand in more than 50 countries.

Milestone
Number of listed restaurants: in 2008 it was 4000
restaurants which increase to 94000 in 2013 and currently
384,100 in Q1 of 2015.

 Monthly visitors of Zomato increases to 35 million in 2014

which was 11 million in 2013 and 0.015 million in 2008.
Yearly revenue of Zomato in 2008 was 0.06 crores which
increased to 11.3 crores in 2013.
Spread in 21 countries worldwide.

Business Model

10

11

Zomatos Value Proposition

12

Zomatos Customers
Customer groups

Customer channels

13

Value chain

14

Zomato scope of activities

Zomato supply

15

Zomato Consultancy

16

Zomato Partners

17

Social media Strategy

Zomato uses different platforms to engage their customers with

them.
Facebook
There is a huge engagement of customers on Facebook. Zomato
has more than 600k strong Facebook community.

18

Twitter
Twitter is a place where Zomato is sparkling. It has more than 114
k followers there. Used as a conversation platform with the
customers, Zomato is doing a great job in engaging their
customers on their page. They answers all the queries raised over
the platform by the customers.
Blog
Sharing and updating with all the latest updates is a key point for
any organization. Zomato uses their blog as their mouthpiece to
share all the latest updates.
Pinterest
The platform shares the food experience with great content to
attract their customers. The company needs to do a lot of job to
make its followers on this platform which will certainly work in
their promotion.

Instagram
This platform lets the user share the foodie photographs just by
sharing it using the tag # Zomato. The image automatically gets
shared on the microsite.

Success Story
The key factor for Zomato success is its marketing strategy and
in-depth knowledge of their competitors. Zomato aims to be a
place where the foodies hangout. The company has spread in 20
countries with its headquarter in New Delhi, India providing

19

service to over 35 million values customers per month. The list of

registered restaurants on the website has increased to 384,100
till March 2015.
Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are the 3 main platforms which
made the base for the success of Zomato with a deep presence
among their customers. Other than that, Zomato has extensively
invested a lot over SMOs, SEOs and has worked a lot more user
interactive. Side by side with a goal to branch globally, they also
invest much on TV ads to bombinate Zomato.
Pankaj Chaddah, the co-founder of Zomato agreed, ads on the
mobile app revenue game for them. More than 50% of their total
traffic come Using loc-basedtionservices to target ads around a
consumers physical location helps this decision easier said
Chaddah.
Sanjeev Bikchandani, co-founder of Info Edge and Zomatos
largest sharehol will focus on segments such as online food
ordering, restaurant booking, subscription-based services and
billing inside of restaurants.
It all started in an office cafeteria five years ago in Delhi, India.
Zomato's founders used to sit with their colleagues and stare at
the same five menus from restaurants near their workplace.
Bored with the limited choice, they started collecting restaurant
menus and placed them on a website. Four years and fourteen
cities later, Zomato was ready to spice up the UK food market.
The India-based restaurant discovery service set up in London
with help from London & Partners.

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CONTENT MARKETING

21

Images play a vital role in social media marketing. And there are
enough data to support the notion. According to Zabisco, we
process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. And 40% people
respond better to visual content, compared to any text
information. Almost every brand is working on this area and
trying their level best to charm their audience with visuals. But
only a few are doing it with an A+ grade. Zomato is one of them.
Zomato is a restaurant and other eatery finding application that
currently operates in 15 countries including India, Brazil, Turkey,
Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka,
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Chile and
Portugal.
Now coming back to their social media campaigns, if you see their
Facebook page, you would know that I am not at all exaggerating.
Here are 8 lessons every brand should learn from Zomato.
They are entertaining: They always manage to put a smile or
sometimes big laughs on your face. There lies the greatness of
Zomatos Facebook strategy. It tickles the funny bone, always.

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Probably, this is one of the reasons that you cannot ignore their
updates, once they hit your timeline.

Excellent graphics: Each post of Zomato marks excellence and

higher degree of creativity. You can detect something new on
there every post. It may be a new foodie thought, or a new painpoint of their audience, or just an extraordinary post on a regular
affair. All their updates offer freshness as well as a clear message.

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They never fail to cash the latest happenings: Zomato

always create something for ongoing events. And their USP is that
they do it differently. For example, take the following post about
Valentines Day for instance. It covered every type of people, no
matter if they had a date or not. And ultimately, the foodie, who
was without a date, had the final smile.

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25

Have a definite call-to-action: Its now proven that call-toaction is an important factor of image marketing. Zomato does it
flawlessly. But what makes them different from others is, they do
it very delicately, so that their posts dont sound too sales-y.

They prefer quality to quantity: Experts have been preaching

to give importance to quality and not to quantity. Zomato follows
it. They dont post everyday. Sometimes, they skip posting for a
fortnight. Does it affect their engagement? No! Their audience
eagerly waits for their updates to come. And when it makes the
grand entry, engagement reaches the zenith.
Updates are simple yet engaging: Zomato does not use
industry jargons. Their posts are simple with enticing graphics

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and text. It increases their engagement quotient to a great

extent. No matter how their posts are, be it text-rich or graphicsrich, you cannot go away reading the entire piece. If you are a
Zomato fan on Facebook, you would admit this.

All posts are relevant to the niche: Zomato deals with food.
All their posts are somehow related to the industry and
successfully tickle the foodie bone of every person. Sometimes
they suggest their audience on their food choices while
sometimes they literally drag them to browse their website. In
other words, Zomato successfully brings out the foodie in you.
Knows its audiences: Zomato knows its audience, and how!
There are posts for everyone, or to say it precisely, for every
foodie. Be it a series watcher or a sports fan; a parent or a tech

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geek, Zomato deprives nobody. Take the following update for an

instance.

28

29

30

Business aim
As part of its global expansion plans, Zomato saw an opportunity
to enter and dominate London's restaurant review and bookings
market. But the company needed a trusted partner to help it
understand the sector, establish an office and recruit the right
staff.

London & Partners services

Finding an office: introductions to serviced office
providers; guidance on office space in Tech City
Recruiting staff: advice on salaries, recruitment and work
placements
Market intelligence: providing information on London
restaurant, hotel and venue listings
Professional services: advising on accountants and legal
firms

Business success in London

Zomato set up its sales team in London in November 2012 and
launched its website just three months later in January 2013. By
April 2013 the London operation had 16,900 restaurants on its
books and employed nine people. It is on track to employ 25-30
people within three years.

31

The Strategy
Rao pinned down three major factors that would make the
campaign a success: in-house PR, community engagement and
the right timing.
Zomato believed its staff could talk most passionately about the
brand. This is why Rao kept the PR in house. He explains: We
wanted to do our marketing efforts because we personally wanted
to build relationships with the media over time. If you change
from one agency to another, you lose that contact. It approach
when it comes to PR. It was definitely cheaper to do it ourselves
as well.
Simultaneously, Zomato built a social media community. It
reached out to bloggers every week, collecting valuable feedback
and improving the product. As most of the marketing was done in
house, it was also important to get a taste for the opinion.

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Six months in, Zomato had been cooking up ideas with the online
community side-by-side. At this point, half a million users were
coming onto its website every month. Zomatos recipe was going
Now it was to time plant o launch. Its campaign to increase brand
visibility.

We had a good momentum going, so all we needed was that pus

stages a success. We felt the timing was right. The feedback had
been integrated, our product was very good and we had a strong
user base. We wanted to take it to the next level,which meant
more people should know about Zomato,
In order to reach the greatest number of hungry commuters,
timing was very important. Rao explains: We could he campaign
has in run July, but many people would have been on holiday so
we decided to wait until September.
Zomatos campaign resembled a tightly run kitchen, with Rao
exactly what results hed like to see reeserved-foldincreaseup.in
We wanted website traffic, but we also focused on mobile apps.
We werent-fold look increase, but were hoping to have the
amount of downloads do.

The Execution
The next step was to take a closer look at its users.
We no
95 per cent of our users take the Tube at some point. So we
considered that would be the best way to reach out to them. We
also saw that 70 per cent of our users are young professionals
who work for corporations. When looking where to advertise, we

33

selected the City and Canary Wharf because they were Zomatos
most po explains.
The 500,000 campaign also enticed people by advertising its
tasty wares through other mediums. From the total budget, a
significant amount went o also decided to advertise in print. So
we ran ads with The Evening Standard, City AM,The Wharf and
outer-London trade publications, he says.
For the companys online campaign, Zomato used a display ad
behavioural targeting to get its message out. From the cate
focused primarily on food blogs and online communities. We also
targeted people whose online behaviour showed an interest in
food and e-commerce websites. While food websites ensured
relevance, the e-commerce sites were added so that we could
target people who have a certain disposable income and can
afford eating out.
But the heat almost got too much in the kitchen, as the team
struggled to decide on its main message. Our initial USP was that
we had lots of rich the simple message explaining how we
started. Up until the deadline we had several messages in place.
In the end, we decided to forget about everything and go back to
basics, Rao says.
To get Zomatos ravenous followers to share the companys co
considered the best way forward media strategy.Our never social
involved too much talking about the product itself. The posts on
social media, especially on Facebook, are more about showing our
humorous side. People prefer to share that content. Our main
intent was for people to link Zomato with restaurants and food.

The Outcome

34

The campaign ran for two and a half weeks, leading to some t
five-fold increase in the number of reviews that were submitted;
70 per cent of those came through the mobile apps. The numbers
were significantly higher than in India, where we saw a two-fold
increase in reviews after our campaign
The mobile apps proved particularly popularwnloaded.The
muchapps were more, which pushed up the rankings and the
amount of people interacting. From a user point of view, that was
the biggest indication that outdoor advertising impacted user
interaction. When youre in the Tube you dontseesuchhavean
connecti increase is great.
After the campaign, the apps shot through the ranks. The Zomato
iOS app is now placed at number eight in the food and drink
category, having jumped from slot 84 in under two weeks. The
companys web asedtrafficfrom5 perhascentalsoto10 incre per
cent week-on-week. When looking at the complete 10-month
period, Zomato has gone from zero to 20,000 restaurant listings,
700 to over 700,000 unique monthly visits and from zero to
12,000 restaurant reviews.
Big food brands have also become more receptive to Zomatos
servic brands are getting to know about Zomato, which is a good
sign. Many have been e-mailing us, asking to update their listings
or for a meeting to discuss what more can be done on
Zomato,says he

The Analysis
Looking back, Rao would have liked to get more for his money
only focused on brand visibility. But ideally I would have also done

35

a campaign with a call for action. In some time we will start to

think about doing that.
The challenge Zomato now faces is to maintain the impression
objective of brand visibility weve achieved. Now the campai lies
in sustaining our impact. So were refocusing the campai
happens. Weve visited restaurants and put over 2,000 sticke
campaign is prolonged over time, Rao says.
For Zomatos next campaign, the company will be going back t
explore what zero-cost marketing efforts it can use. Its about PR
restaurants and getting more bloggers on board. Were also l
expanding within the UK. So for 2014, our budget will be invested
in city expansion,improving content and doing events related to
food. So expe served up, coming to a city near you.

SWOT Analysis

36

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37

Global Competitive Matrix ( GCM )

Framework

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38

Porter Diamond Framework

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Zomatos Current Business Strategy

Customers Point of View
Zomatos offers to the customers are: provides the databases of
various restaurants with information like food menu, prices,
budget constraints, contact related, working hours, location of
restaurant and more usefully, the reviews from other users. It also
provides the option for mobile apps for almost all mobile
platforms. Zomatohas a huge presence over social media which
has further contributed to app usage.
Restaurant Owners Point of View
Restaurants through this route have got access to a large pool of
customers registered on the app, which is growing at an
exponential rate. Zomato provide restaurant owners a platform
for online visibility. This is particularly useful for many small
restaurants which cant afford a website themselves or didnt
have much business due to location drawbacks. The contacts
information on websites has increased the home delivery orders
to nearby places. The customer interaction happens in the form of
feedback and reviews. Restaurants can enjoy additional visibility
by Zomatos dedicated marketing campaigns, but this comes at a
cost.
Zomatos Point of View
Zomato sells advertising spaces on websites to restaurant owners
and make recommendations to restaurants based on changing
trends& sales performance analysis. Zomato also initiates various

40

paid marketing campaigns for clients.Product pricing which is

sustainable, offering products with longevity an expanding
operations in a calculated but committed manner are the ways
through which Zomato signal their desire for longevity.

Innovation at Zomato
Zomato operates in a niche segment by offering restaurant
database to customers along with the menu, the location and
perhaps the most important, reviews. One can ponder over how a
player operating in a niche segment be so successful that the
segment itself has started grabbed eyeballs and is becoming
main-stream. This has been made possible by the strategic
innovations the website has carried over the years of operation.
A 360 degree turnaround strategy was employed in the spheres
of Marketing, Operations and IT infrastructure. While many of the
innovations can be termed as proactive, Zomato managed to find
creative solutions to some of the major problems prevalent in the
segment.
Marketing
Being a niche player, it is very important that the masses are
aware about website and its offerings. Not only did Zomato
achieved the same, it established advertising as its core
competency. They employ both Below the Line (advertising) and
TV ads to remain at top of the consumers mind. Most of their
campaigns went viral due to creativity in their ads, be it print,
social media or television. As a result, Zomato has become

41

synonymous with the term restaurant database. Most of the

other players do not have any significant presence online.
Zomato has a major presence on social media i.e. Facebook and
Twitter. There are two kinds of people in the world has been the
most successful campaign so far in terms of customer
engagement (See Exhibit 1). Zomato believe in Content is the
King. They never spam the wall with irrelevant posts, create ads
around food, replies to each and every user post and have apps
for all the mobile platforms.
The re-branding in 2010 proved to be a major challenge.
Foodiebay became Zomato due to i) having the term ebay in
their name and ii) having received funding by InfoEdge of which
large part was to be used for marketing. The company saw it as
the right time to adopt a different identity and lay out a formal
organizational structure and culture. The company was growing
rapidly and a rule book had to be followed. But Zomato lost many
loyal customers and was a target of a number of hate mails due
to the name change. Moreover, the sales team wasnt aware of
the reason of re-branding and there was widespread confusion.
The company didnt do well in this regard, none of the employees
were informed and there was a fear that they were being taken
over. Things have been much better lately.
Operations
Zomato isnt as involved in intensive operations as a
manufacturing or FMCG firm would be. The challenges being
faced by Zomato are more of growth pangs. Their operational
strategy is to get things done on priority rather than creating new
processes for them to be accomplished. Since, the teams are
getting bigger and bigger in size, controlling them and infusing
order in the chaos has lately been proving difficult. As the

42

company is growing, a restricting or some innovation in

operations division may be necessary. Moreover, the company is
following global strategy and will soon be open for business in
Singapore and Dubai. Hiring the right people has been the
challenge. A lingering question of whether to hire Indian for
overseas operations or hire the local personnel who may prove to
be difficult to control, has always been at the back of the mind.
Meeting demand for new features on the website from the
customer has been another big challenge. The idea may not be a
strategic fit for the company but they have to think hard on the
issue if a major chunk of customer demands the same feature.
One such often requested feature is accepting orders online on
behalf of restaurants. While Zomato affirms that they possess the
necessary technical skills and sales personnel to implement the
same, operational challenges such as customization of food as
per the customer and adhering to promised delivery time are yet
to be worked upon.

IT Infrastructure
Zomatos website is visited by 20 million foodies every month.
The website provides them innovative features such as
opportunity to share their stories being a foodie and allows them
to create and share their personal food diary. The website
automatically detects the users location and has a customized
page for everyone (see Exhibit 2). There is an active blog updated
by the CEO himself. New features are added almost every week.
Such large traffic has to be backed up by a robust infrastructure

43

and Zomato is constantly working towards meeting up to the

challenges.
As the website is growing bigger, customer reviews are becoming
all the more important. A review can make or break a restaurants
business. Lately, the website is seeing a lot of spam, a lot of
restaurants are planting fake reviews. Zomato has to evolve its IT
system for having basic automated spam filters to sophisticated
pattern matching algorithms. All this will of course involve costs.
Most of the companies of Zomatos size do not even care about
load times of their websites. But Zomato is planning to lay
infrastructure in every country where it operates, so that load
times are faster and users can get food faster. Cost is again a
major issue.

Major Competitors
There are lots of competitors available but majorly there are 3 :
Foodpanda

44

 Just eat
Burrp

Major Acquisition by Zomato

45

THREE PROBLEMS THAT WERE AT

ZOMATO
Our engineering team is always cranking to improve our services
and make your food hunt easier. As a small update, here is whats
keeping us awake at night these days:
1. Building a dish database :
Wouldnt it be great if we could search for restaurants serving a
specific dish? For example, it would be great to be able to find the
best places that serve a Tenderloin Steak. The only way to make
this happen is if we have structured data for every dish served in
a restaurant. Weve already made some effort in this direction the
manual way - by typing out a few thousand menu cards in every
city that we are in. However, given the churn rate of the
restaurant industry (about 25% restaurants shut down every

46

quarter), it is getting difficult for us to manually keep pace with all

the new menu cards that come our way. We are trying to create
intelligent OCR systems to supplement our existing dish ontology.
Misspellings (in the menus) and from the OCR mechanism just
make it all the more complicated.
2. Spam control :
Two years ago, this wasnt a problem. Why? Very simply, a
restaurants rating Zomato didnt make or break its business back
then. Nowadays, it does make a difference, to a certain extent.
Since a lot of restaurant owners also realise this, they try to game
the system by planting fake reviews on the platform. We have,
over time, learnt how to identify most of these cases, but some
intelligent spam tactics skip our automated filters. Our filters
currently range from simple data analysis and pattern matching
to user behaviour mapping over a few months. However, we
realise that we constantly have to keep track of what is making its
way onto the platform to help maintain its neutrality and
usefulness to our users. Also, we need to evolve these systems to
outsmart everyone who tries to game the system (despite
following the rules). Its an ongoing effort, and I dont think we will
ever be able to say this problem has been solved for good.
3. Lower server latency for our geographically widespread
traffic :
This isnt something new, and a few companies have already
done this very efficiently. Most companies our size dont even
care about this. However, we want to serve all our traffic (in the
Philippines, as well as in London) from servers that sit close to our
users physical locations. Lower server latency = users get to food
faster. Replicating all our infrastructure in various locations on a
master-slave basis and then keeping everything in sync is not

47

easy for us as of now, and this is something we are trying to

address over the very short term itself.

Conclusion
Zomato has been able to grow at such an astonishing pace due to
the adoption and effective implementation of Turnaround
Strategies in every field of the business, be it marketing,
operations, IT or HR. Funds have always been a major concern
and every time Zomato has managed to obtain them from an
eager venture capitalist. Zomato is here to stay, and everyone
realizes it.
Deepinder must decide whether the company wants to focus on
innovating its business model and keep providing new features in
India or continue with the existing model and expand globally.
Funds will have to be directed accordingly. More and more
competitors are entering the market, although they havent seen
as much success. Can Zomato afford to ignore them all and hope
that no one replicates their business model? Suddenly the phone
rings, a person of the other side says, Sir, we are live in Chile.
Where do we expand next?

48