They say time flies when you’re having fun. And the only measure of how much fun we’ve been having, is how quickly the past year has gone by.

A few days shy of a year ago today, we took a long, hard look at what it takes for a company (read: us) to go global. We’d be lying if we said there was nothing to lose, and that we could venture into foreign markets with reckless abandon. After many a sleepless night of planning and debate, we took the plunge. Straight into the deep end of the pool. Our first stop? Dubai.

By September, we had our first international section ready to launch, with a total of 3,500 restaurants listed in Dubai. In the next couple of months, we added Abu Dhabi and Sharjah to the list of Emirates we were present in, taking our international presence to three cities. Our next international launch was slightly closer to home, with our Colombo (Sri Lanka) section going live soon after. By November, we were getting restless again. We’d proven to ourselves that we could set seemingly insurmountable challenges, and then manage to complete them. We knew we needed to add more countries to the map and grow quicker. Since we are ardent believers in “go big or go home”, we decided to go bigger than we’d ever gone before. Our London launch was one of the toughest yet, but it proved yet again that we had it what it takes to take on the big boys on the playground. By March, we’d also set up operations in Doha, which had been in the pipeline for a while. Around the turn of the year, we’d sent a few people out to explore a various potential markets for us. The Philippines and South Africa were two of the highlights of our scouting efforts, and we set our sights on launching in Metro Manila, and in multiple cities in South Africa. The third week of March saw our Metro Manila section going live with information for over 9000 restaurants in the city. Just about two weeks later, Zomato Johannesburg was live, with 2000 restaurants listed.

While calling it ‘world domination’ makes us sound a little like evil super-villains, it’s no secret that we’d like to further grow our geographical footprint. In July this year, Zomato turned five. And since no birthday is complete without a little celebration, we decided we’d launch five new cities to mark the occasion. We grew our presence in South Africa by launching a section for Cape Town, while also adding Birmingham and Manchester to the roster in the UK. Two of the five cities were also in a whole new country for us – Auckland and Wellington, in New Zealand.

Undoubtedly, one of the most amazing aspects of growing so quickly has been the effort the team has put in. Right from collecting data in extreme weather conditions, burning the midnight oil to make sure all information gets listed, making product customisations to suit local preferences, to launching and driving marketing and PR in new locations. We’re also very proud of how diverse our team is; our team is now made up of people from over different 15 nationalities doing a kickass job globally over the past year.

It’s been an exhilarating ride so far, and we’re sure the best is yet to come. As I write this, we are scrambling to get our operations set up in Brazil and Turkey. It isn’t easy, but what’s life without a challenge? After all, building a global company is just an itch that has to be scratched.