Zomato hits 3 Mn orders mark, adds up 1 Mn in past 4 months

Restaurant search and discovery platform Zomato has announced that it has hit 3 million orders a month today. The platform has been able to reach the mark in the past 25 months.

Importantly, it added a few lakh orders between July 18 and August 17, taking the total order a month to three million in the last 31 days.

3 million orders a month. 1% done. ????https://t.co/GNwHmLDxQX

— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) August 17, 2017

Since launching its delivery business in September 2015, it took around 13 months for the platform to reach its first million orders a month. The second million took another 8 months, and the third million orders a month happened in another 4 months.

The platform, which takes orders from food joints, quick service restaurant (QSR) and restaurants, said that it delivered maximum number of orders from restaurants, which is as high as 93 per cent.

Besides, 69 per cent of orders were made from phones -- Andoid (51%) and iPhone (38%) -- and 11 per cent from web. Importantly, on customer retention, Zomato says that it has received orders from 65 per cent newly signed up users in the past 12 months.

Interestingly, Zomato claims to have achieved all the numbers without spending money on customer acquisition.

Currently, only about 7 per cent of overall orders are being facilitated by Zomato through third-party delivery companies. The home-grown global restaurant-discovery and food-ordering platform is in advanced stage to acquire food delivery startup Runnr.

Runnr will help Info Edge-backed company to launch premium service - Zomato Valet. It will focus on high-value restaurants that don’t deliver food on their own.

Zomato was one of the last players to enter the food-ordering market, however it claims to narrow the gap with market leader Swiggy. 

The Temasek-backed company is reportedly to hit 4 million order mark anytime soon. Currently, Swiggy claims to fulfil about 3.6 million on a monthly basis.

Driven by aggressive global expansion between 2015 and 2016, Zomato’s losses soared. The company’s operating losses that shoot-upto Rs 425 crore in 2015-16, from Rs 113 crore in the previous fiscal, settled down to Rs 101 crore in 2016-17 as the company scaled down operations in international markets including US, Canada, Ireland and Italy.

At present, Zomato operates in 23 countries and claims to generate revenue from 11 of these. Meanwhile, Zomato’s revenue also jumped to Rs 334 crore in 2016-17, from Rs 185 crore in the previous fiscal.

Recently, Zomato partnered with ride-hailing app Ola to book rides and pay via the company’s mobile wallet, Ola Money.