Today marks 4 years of our international presence. On the 1st of September in 2012, we launched our very first market outside of India – Dubai.

Four years on, we claim to be the #1 player in our space in 18 countries (of the 23 we’re in) in terms of monthly unique users. We say ‘claim’ because it’s hard to substantiate, given the limited availability of data about our competitors in these countries.

Given the data we do have access to, this post is a reflection on how our international foray has worked for us, and where we’re headed as a global consumer internet brand born in India.

To start with, here’s some data on some of our cities for you to binge on –

What’s our biggest learning after all these years of running a multi-country business, you ask?
It is that everybody should find their own way to determine the real market size for their business. Nobody knows your business as well as you do, so don’t believe the press, the VCs, or market research companies. Listen to everyone, but then decide for yourself.

Why do we say that?
We often get asked – “Auckland? Seriously? Isn’t the market size too small?”

Since we’re on the topic – we love Auckland. Not just for the
people and the city, but also for the market size. Before we go into
detail on how the market sizes of our various cities stack up against
each other, here are some definitions you need to know:

• Market Size = # of listings in the city x average size of a restaurant x utilisation rates x average ticket size of a meal
• Indexed Market Size: Assuming the average size of a restaurant in a city and utilisation rates are the same across the world (and they are, more or less), the relative market size can be defined simply as # of listings in a city x average ticket size of a meal
• We measure Relative Market Size using Delhi NCR as the benchmark
  (where Delhi NCR = 1). Why Delhi NCR? It’s where we have the richest and
  most complete restaurant information, making it a fair yardstick for us
  to compare other cities and their importance as a market.

Now, here’s how the cities we saw in the infographic compare to one another in terms of relative market size. The Strong/Medium labels indicate how we view our position in that market, in terms of a multitude of factors – including, but not limited to – our user base, client penetration, revenue, brand recall, and competition.

So you see, despite being physically smaller (you can fit ~42 Aucklands into one Delhi NCR), and having fewer restaurant listings (~6k vs ~16k), Auckland is actually stronger than Delhi NCR in terms of market size.

Does loving Auckland as much as we do make more sense now? 🙂

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The road ahead

Over the coming months, we’ll be focusing on 21 cities across these countries, improving our presence and position in newer markets like Kuala Lumpur (where we still consider our position of strength to be comparatively ‘Low’), and high-potential markets where we’re yet to move into a position of strength, such as Sydney and Istanbul. A lot of this will be driven by operational improvements on the ground, backed by laser focus on our consumer and business products. 

For those wondering – it’s unlikely we’ll look at establishing
ourselves in markets like the UK and the Americas using the same
approaches we’ve taken in the past. These call for a slightly different
strategy, and can only realistically be solved for with very strong and
smart tech. There’s a lot of that in the pipeline, so watch this space.

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Looking back, are we glad we decided to take the leap and go international when we did? Certainly. Has it been a roller coaster ride? We’d be lying if we said it hasn’t. Have we learned a lot from it? Way more than we would have learned from sitting in India, reading the Expansion 101 manual.

Most importantly, though – has it worked?

Given that we’re traffic leaders in all our 21 focus cities and are already delivering USD 3bn worth of value to restaurants – we’ll dare say it has.

P.S. The data in the infographic is sometimes from various
unreliable sources; we have made an effort to be borderline
pessimistic/realistic. Please consider these numbers as guesstimates.