Increasing its global footprint, food and restaurant directory Zomato.com has launched in London. The Indian startup, one of few that made it to the fast and furious Dabbang-2 list by NBW, will hit London on January 26.
The London edition is currently in invite only mode. It lists more than 13,000 restaurants with over 12,000 dine-out places, 9,000 takeaways and close to 2,000 delivery enabled restaurants.
Unlike Zomato’s Indian avatar, its English version has a “takeaway” option. Looking at the number of restaurants listed on the site, ratings and user reviews, it seems that the edition has been live for local users from sometime.
Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato said:
“Our goal is to provide the foodies in London complete information about the restaurants around them before they make the choice to dine-out, get food delivered or order a takeaway”.
The Gurgaon based company had raised $2.3 million from Info Edge (India) Limited, in September last year and launched in UAE (Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi) and Colombo (Sri Lanka) in the same month. Info Edge, the company which runs popular job portal Naukri.com picked up a 48.5 % stake in the company.
Like Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Colombo editions, Zomato London edition will only offer restaurant section. Apart from restaurant listing , London edition of the website provides scanned menus, photos, mapped coordinates and information about restaurants in London.
With this first expansion beyond Asia, Zomato has signaled its aggressive global ambitions like Yelp, the US based local directory service which is rumored to be launching in India soon after its debut in Singapore in September 2012.
In India Zomato offers its discovery and review engine to 13 cities and claims to have more than 9 million users every month .
Recommended Read: From India to World : Yes, We CAN do it. Go Global, Entrepreneurs [Part 1]
Discussion: Why Zomato has not yet raised money from investors beyond InfoEdge
