Since Zomato launched as a restaurant discovery and reviews platform over 10 years ago, we have continued to build depth to solve various problems within the food value chain. Our efforts in the delivery and listings business continue to grow aggressively. Now, with the launch of innovative products like Zomato Gold, Piggybank, Hygiene Ratings, and businesses like Table Reservations, Hyperpure and Food@work, we are able to provide convenient, transparent and loyalty-driven food experiences.

In the last year, we’ve launched in over 40 new cities across India, adding nearly 80,000 new restaurants to our base. There’s been tremendous growth in the industry – the number of restaurants (both of delivery and dining out) are increasing at a very rapid pace. This growth reflects in user behaviour on Zomato as well as people are increasingly going online to make their food choices, and order food, or book a table to ensure a great dining experience.

We launched our table reservation platform in 2016, and since then, made great headway in enhancing the online booking experience for our users as well as restaurant partners. In 2018, 10.5 million diners booked tables online on Zomato.

Today, Zomato might just be the largest processor of table reservations in India. On top of that, all the reservations made through our platform are un-incentivised – i.e. without any discount associated with the action of reserving a table. All these numbers are pure, organic and distribution-led traction.

2018 saw a 60% increase in the number of restaurants accepting online table reservations through Zomato. This spike created more opportunities for diners to quickly reserve tables online, resulting in an incredible 3.5x growth in the number of bookings from the previous year. A key driver of this growth is seen especially during special occasions and big events when large groups of people are out celebrating. For instance, this Valentine’s day, we saw 150,000 diners reserve tables through Zomato — a remarkable 45% increase from New Year’s Eve just two months ago.

So the next time you decide to dine out, you’re sure to be spoilt for choice, as well as have plenty more opportunities to quickly get a reservation made at the restaurant you love.