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Zomato is a restaurant search and discovery service founded in 2008 by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. It currently operates in 22 countries, including India, Australia and the United States. It features restaurant information such as scanned menus and photos sourced by local street teams, as well as user reviews and ratings. The company also provides cashless payment, online ordering, white-label apps, table reservation, and point-of-sale systems. ==History== The service began as "Foodiebay", conceptualised in the cafeteria of Bain & Company. Customers would line up to look at the menus to order food during the lunch hour. Realizing this took up a large amount of everyone's time on a daily basis, Deepinder and Pankaj decided to scan restaurant menus and upload it on an intranet website for Bain employees. The website saw a lot of traffic and was launched publicly in 2008. The website began by listing restaurants in Delhi NCR, and quickly expanded to Kolkata and then Mumbai. In March 2010, Zomato (Foodiebay) was named among the top 25 most promising internet companies in India by ''SmartTechie Magazine.'' Soon after, Info Edge (India), the parent company of the Naukri.com group, invested ₹4.7 crore (US$1 million) in the business. In November 2010, Foodiebay was renamed to Zomato. The brand name was changed due to a possible move outside of the food sector and also to avoid possible confusion with eBay, as the earlier brand name Foodiebay contained "ebay" in it. By 2011, Zomato started coverage in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad and they launched applications for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry devices. Following the introduction of .xxx domains in 2011, Zomato also launched (zomato.xxx ), a site dedicated to food porn. The company also launched a print version of the content on the website known as the "Citibank Zomato Restaurant Guide" in collaboration with Citibank in May 2012, but has since been discontinued. During the run, these guides were made available in four cities in India—Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune. By September 2012, Zomato expanded to its first overseas location, United Arab Emirates, following which, Zomato saw quick expansion into Sri Lanka, Qatar, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, and South Africa. The company launched in Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand in July 2013, and Hamilton in December 2013. It made its way to Turkey, Brazil, and Indonesia in November 2013, with its website and apps available in Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, Indonesian, and English. 2014 was a year full of expanding international reach and acquisitions. In April, Zomato launched its services in Portugal. In July, Zomato made its first acquisition by buying New Zealand's Menu-mania for an undisclosed sum. In August the focus was on Europe. The company acquired online restaurant guides Lunchtime.cz (from the Czech Republic) and Obedovat.sk (from Slovakia) for a combined $3.25 million. In September, Zomato acquired Poland-based restaurant search service Gastronauci for an undisclosed sum. In October, Zomato finally entered North America by launching its services in Canada. Shortly after, in November, it extended its reach to Lebanon and Ireland as well. In December, Zomato acquired leading Italian restaurant search service Cibando. Zomato started 2015 by acquiring Seattle-based food portal Urbanspoon for an undisclosed sum (estimated to be around $60 million). The acquisition marked Zomato's entry into the United States, Canada and Australia, and brought it into direct competition with Yelp, Zagat and OpenTable. In the same month, Zomato also acquired Mekanist, one of Turkey's largest restaurant search players, in an all-cash deal that makes Zomato the most exhaustive restaurant search service in the country. The acquisition increased Zomato's coverage from about 27,500 restaurants in Istanbul and Ankara to more than 50,000 restaurants across Turkey. In October 2014, Zomato introduced a new logo — the Zomato heart, which in February 2015 was updated to the Urbanspoon's Spoon logo in Zomato red. This was done to ensure that the transition for users from Urbanspoon to Zomato was easier. As per press reports, Zomato now attracts 90 million monthly visits. Zomato has recently also broadened its reach and acquired companies that focus on other aspects of restaurant businesses. In April 2015, they acquired a 4 year old Delhi based startup MapleGraph that built MaplePOS, a cloud-based point of sale product for restaurants. Zomato renamed the MaplePOS product to ‘Zomato Base’. MaplePOS was Zomato’s first acquisition of a restaurant-focused product outside their core business. In the same month, Zomato also acquired NexTable, a US-based table reservation and restaurant management platform. Together, NexTable and Zomato will launch Zomato Book, a table reservation system for merchants. On 4th June, 2015, an Indian security researcher hacked the Zomato website, gained access to information about 62.5 million users. Using the vulnerability he was able to access personal data of users such as phone number, email address, and Instagram private photos using their Instagram access token. Zomato fixed the issue within 48 hours of it becoming apparent.〔https://www.techinasia.com/zomato-hacked-indian-online-startups-security-granted/〕 On 15th October, 2015 Zomato changed business strategies from a Full-Stack market to an enterprise market. This led to Zomato firing 10% of its workforce which equals about 300 people. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Zomato」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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