The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery – Harold Wilson

It has been a year since me, Pankaj and Gunjan quit our jobs to focus on Foodiebay. Foodiebay passed many milestones in the last year – we served 2 million customers, launched our services in two more cities – Pune and Bangalore, and now list more than 8,000 restaurants on the website. One of the largest Internet companies in India, Infoedge, also noticed our progress and gave us the much needed breathing space to grow bigger, faster. But we still think that this is Day 1 for Foodiebay. Our customers have grown to love our website for bringing the most comprehensive and accurate information about restaurants in 5 cities across India.  But, never being satisfied, one of the things that we do is to get out of our comfort zone to provide more information and be more relevant to our users. So far our users were limited to certain cities and countries and technology platforms. Not anymore. We plan to expand not only to more cities in India but to countries as well. Starting next year we plan to go international in our offerings and it’s not just that, we want to offer you more than just restaurant directory listings. As a product, we want to evolve into a recommendation engine that suggests you the best places to order home delivery from or to dine-out at. We are also planning to launch a nightlife section very soon. Overall, the question we want to answer for you in the longer term is – “Where should I go today”? We saw that if we wanted to touch broader horizons then the name “Foodiebay” wasn’t going to be the best option since it might restrict our perception as just a food website. And right now was the time to reflect deeply and think about what we should be christened as especially since we are going to invest heavily in marketing the brand. Another thought that was at the back of our minds was to prevent any overstepping of ebay when we start accepting online payments.  Given these goals, we put our heads to the grindstone and thought a lot about it the last 2 weeks. All this wasn’t easy because we love Foodiebay as much as you do. So we decided to keep the idea of food at the center but choose a name that is timeless and encompassing. We decided on the name Zomato. Zomato’s got a zing to it and is originally a play on the word Tomato. Zomato is not restricted to food either. Changing the name of a business is never easy. We have built a reasonable amount of brand equity over years and we stand to lose it all. But realistically, we saw that we were approaching a wall and we had to take a couple of steps back to jump over it. And with a team most startups can only dream of, we are confident that we will pull this off successfully. What next? A lot of new things:

When exactly are we changing to Zomato?

Starts at 14 November 2010: 12AM (it might take the whole day); but don’t worry, our life saving services (menus) will still work on both Foodiebay.com and Zomato.com

New Logo

It’s all over zomato.com. What do you think of it?

Newsletter

You guys loved Crunch but we sort of went silent on that one didn’t we? Well no more, we aim to cover the best that places have to offer with everything related to food. Don’t be surprised to find tantalizing foodshots in this one along with great deals.

New Office

We decided that change should begin with the location. We have moved our office area to a bigger joint. Have you checked out our video yet?

New Design

Well a logo change alone wouldn’t do now would it? With our expansive goals and ambitions, we decided we’ll get a new dress for ourselves. The ordering’s done, the stitching’s taking some time but we should have ourselves well decked by the end of the year.

New Interactions

A lot of you asked for recommendations on where to eat and sometimes what to eat. We heard you, with our new design we plan to introduce our recommendations list. It doesn’t stop there, we’ll soon tell you where your friends have been, what they enjoyed eating and where/what you should be eating too!

New Mobile App!

Wouldn’t you love to satisfy your hunger on the go without having to take out that laptop and check out the details, well fear no more. Whether you are powered by the Android, Blackberry, Symbian or the iPhone you should be able to check our geo-location based applications very soon.

New Recruits

Foodies will henceforth be christened as Zomans. Oh and btw, we are still hiring for tech and designer positions. Do send us an email at jobs@zomato.com if you think you fit the Zill (bill with a Z..!)

FAQ

What happens to Foodiebay.com? Rest assured all the information is still retained and redirected to Zomato.com so you don’t lose out on the treasure of information we had on Foodiebay. In fact we plan to add a lot more. Has the team left? Not at all. If anything they are more into this. Does it have something to do with some other name? Well somewhat but mainly because we want to be more than just food. Is zomato pronounced as zoh-mah-to? or Zoy-may-to? or Zoo-mey-to? We’d prefer the first but a rose is a rose by any other name as Shakespeare said. Can I send feedback? Sure just send an email to info@zomato.com; or write to me directly at deepinder@zomato.com Is anything going to be paid? If you wish to donate to us, we love food. You can get it delivered to our new address in the Gurgaon. But we will never ask you for cash. I’m Hungry. How can you help? Check out zomato.com