Zomato claims 38 Mn monthly orders, plans to enter 500 cities by October

The scale of food delivery companies seems to be outnumbering every other sector in the past 9-10 months. Nearing the 40 million monthly order mark, Zomato has announced that it’s doing about 38 million orders a month. The spike in orders volume is likely to be fuelled by its aggressive expansion into tier II and III towns.

The Ant Financial-backed firm has now presence across 200 cities. "We’ve launched online ordering service in 17 other cities, bringing the total to 213 cities in India,” mentions a press statement from Zomato.

The firm expects to constitute more than 50 per cent of its total order volume from smaller cities by the end of 2019.

Zomato is developing Kitchen hubs in smaller cities in India to drive growth for restaurant partners in smaller cities. It’s worth noting that Zomato had shut down its cloud kitchen brand ZIS last year.

While Zomato’s arch-rival Swiggy hasn’t given any monthly order volume, it’s likely to process more orders than the Gurugram-based company since it also launched Swiggy Store. The Naspers-backed firm delivers everything from meat, grocery to fruits and vegetables.

With over 200 cities, the company claims to cater to 200 million people in the country. It has plans to reach 500 cities by October 2019. According to the company, it’s witnessing sizeable demand from emerging cities. For example, Patiala with a population of 400,000 does as many orders per unit population as Bangalore with a population of 12 million.

Eyeing similar options as Swiggy Store, Zomato is also engaged in conversation with task management app dunzo for a potential acquisition

Apart from being in talks with Ant Financial and Primavera Capital to score anything between $500 million to $1 billion, it recently sold out UAE biz to Delivery Hero for $172 million. It also received a $62.25 million funding tranche led by Delivery Hero.