We’ve had a great 2012 so far! Starting with cleaning up after the massive New Year’s ticketing initiative that we pulled off (which went very very well for us as an organization), we have further strengthened our restaurant content base and and now have in-depth info for close to 30,000 restaurants on Zomato. Number of users are at an all time high for both our web and mobile platforms. Our Events section has seen tremendous growth and we have also been lucky to partner with some major events across cities (Comedy Store, Lucky Ali concerts, M.A.D Festival in Ooty, Annual Comedy Festival, Essel World and many more). We are excited with all the activity happening at Zomato and we wanted to take some time to update you on what we’ve been working on over the last few months.

We have three major updates for you:

1. Launch of our print guide: Yes you read it right “print”! We’ve just moved into print with the launch of ‘Citibank Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012’ for 4 cities in India – Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune; more cities next year!
2. Web: we made things better for you on the web – it should be now easier for you to narrow down to the restaurant to go to or an event to attend.
3. Mobile: Windows Phone native app launched and this is the first time we’ve introduced Events on a mobile platform.

Lets dive into each one in more detail:

1) Print guide: Citibank Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012

We are expanding to the print medium by launching the “Citibank Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012” for 4 cities – Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune. Being published by the world-renowned Hachette Book Group, Citibank Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012 is already available for pre booking on Flipkart (short url: zoma.to/guides). Ok. So why print? Over time, we want to be the brand which people look up when they need to decide where to eat. And we want to be platform agnostic. We know that there will always be a segment which will appreciate the paperback guide to good food around them. But, almost all Food Guides in the market today are directories/ yellow-pages for restaurants, which provide basic info but do not aid users much in taking a decision quickly (it really takes ages for people to decide where to eat after looking at these encyclopedic guides). After all, the search for an appropriate place is based not only on cuisine, price and location but also the ‘occasion’ or ‘mood’. Our Restaurant Guide is an endeavor to solve this problem. So what we created are unique ‘occasion’ based guides that recommend restaurants based on different needs (or use cases) that we have observed our users looking out for. Ranging from Romantic Dinner, Beer in a Bar, Girls’ Night Out to Dining with Kids, the guide shall take you through the best recommendations for all key occasions. So, if you have you ever asked your friends “where can I take my girlfriend for a nice romantic dinner?” or “what’s a great place to grab a couple of beers after work?”, our restaurant guides will answer the questions for you. It is not an encyclopedia of restaurants but a carefully designed list of recommendations for a particular ‘occasion’. The guide is already available for pre-order on Flipkart and will be launched in the second week of May 2012.      

2) Web: A whole new Zomato experience

We’ve just released a new version of Zomato on the web with a plethora of changes. The primary focus of the updates has been to provide the best user experience possible for anyone looking to discover or search for restaurants or events. We believe the latest version of Zomato does exactly that and are looking forward to our users explore what we have to offer in a totally new way.

• Restaurants section
  • A new lean and mean user interface: The look and feel of the new design is minimalistic and the focus is on presenting the content in a much better format. Users should be able to search, use filters and browse restaurant info much more quickly than before.
  • Top 25 restaurants in the city: For a foodie, one question is always on the mind “Which are the best places to eat in this city right now?” Highlighted on the homepage, this section provides the top 25 trending restaurants based on user data on a weekly basis to cater to that craving.
  • Improved Search functionality: I admit that our search is not great, hence striving towards an improved one. The new Zomato search is a little more intelligent and identifies if you are looking for a cuisine in a locality and also has an intrinsic spell check.
  • Foodie credibility and a better user profile: Our users take a lot of time and effort to share their experiences with the foodie community on Zomato through user reviews and we constantly take actions to build this into a strong community. With Foodie credibility, we want to reward (virtually) people who are the most active and respected members of the Zomato community. We have also given a “Sort by reviewer credibility” filter to everyone to quickly get to read reviews from the most seasoned foodies. Currently, based on the number of reviews submitted we are classifying users into the following 4 categories (the numbers might increase in the future):
    • Foodie: upto 10 reviews
    • Big Foodie: upto 20 reviews
    • Super Foodie: upto 35 reviews
    • Connoisseur: more than 35 reviews
• A new way to explore events: We’ve completely revamped the user interface making it easier for the user to know all about the events happening in the city.
  • Featured events: The featured section now has a new bookshelf layout. Using the left and right keys one can quickly get to know about the best events taking place in the city.
  • Improved search and display: We’ve improved our search and one can search for events using event name, artist or venue. The search results layout is now in a grid format and users can explore Events using filters location on top (by location and category of events) and left (by date) of the matrix.
  • A better Event details layout: The Events page is now easier to navigate with all details such as venue, contact details, photos and description on the left and tickets available on the right. A user can also look at past and upcoming events at the venue. This is followed by the venue location on a map, similar events nearby and nearby restaurant sections.
  • This is a big change – we are getting a lot of feedback (good and bad!) and we might be changing a few things in the future.

3) Mobile: Windows Phone native app

We recently launched the native app for the Windows mobile platform (Windows Phone OS). Windows Phone is a very promising product and is growing at a very fast pace. What differentiates the Windows app from apps on other platforms are its amazingly fast Metro UI and the Events guide which Zomato has launched on mobile for the first time. The application allows users to search and explore for nearby restaurants based on the user’s location and events happening in the city. In terms of downloads, we already have 10,000 downloads of our WP app since the launch. We believe that we have leveraged the amazingly fast and smooth UI offered by WP well and are looking forward to reach out to more and more WP users. Zomato on WP Features:

• Discover: Shake your device and discover a nearby recommendation.
• Explore: Gives you a list of restaurant recommendations based on your current location. You can also enter a location and get the list of recommendations.
• Search: You can search for restaurants by the name, cuisine or location.
• Reviews: Read and write reviews for restaurants.
• Maps & Photos: Locate restaurants on the map and view actual pictures of the restaurant before getting there.
• Events: Gives you all details for Events happening in the city during the week