“Sometimes, it’s the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination.” – Anonymous

In the summer of 2015, when we were preparing to launch online food ordering services in India, we had more questions than answers. Yes we had a blueprint in place, and a dedicated team that enjoys tough challenges, but we were still… what’s the word… hungry? Hungry to learn and know more. Until we stepped into the river, we wouldn’t know how cold it was. At the same time, we knew we were capable of achieving what we were setting out to achieve. Since then, we’ve managed to meet expectations in a lot of ways.

In the month of March (2017), with a little more than a day to go, we have processed 2m online food orders through Zomato.

The journey from 1m orders to 2m orders was a hard one, and we learnt a lot about what matters and what doesn’t. Here are some of the ways we got here –

• Better customer retention – a million small things, which ended up compounding towards the current milestone.
• Maniacal focus on customer support. We introduced a new “motto” for our customer support team – “every meal matters”. Since then, the customer support team has been very proactive about every single order that goes through Zomato, and our users are loving us even more than before.
• Effective and faster customer acquisition at negligible cost (our marketing budget for food ordering still hovers around $50k per month).
• We increased the restaurant supply available on Zomato from 12,000 restaurants a few months ago to 18,000 today.

Here are some more numbers which might interest you –

• March will grow ~23%+ over February
• By platform, Android contributes ~48%, iPhone ~36% and Web ~16%
• Average order value is ~INR 430 for India and ~AED 62 for UAE
• The share of restaurant-delivered orders is close to 90%
• Average delivery time is approximately 38 minutes
• Average commission rates of ~8.5% (for restaurant-delivered orders)
• Unit economics are very positive and our net margins on an order are ~55%
• Online food ordering contributes ~20% revenue to our overall topline

We have a great team building our food ordering business. This milestone is a testimony to the quality, focus, and persistence of our team here.

Which brings us to the most important part – our users and restaurateur partners who make everything possible. Without the former’s trust in us, there would be no reason to better ourselves. Without the latter’s belief in us, there would be no variety to look forward to. I take this opportunity to wholeheartedly thank everyone for their unwavering faith in us.

Lastly, there are many more millions to come. We are now the leading food ordering platform in India and UAE. We are also the largest food search/discovery platform in 13 countries outside of India. It is humbling for us to have a shot at building the first truly global consumer internet brand, born and brought up in India. With your continuing love and feedback, we will get there very soon.

🙌