India’s online restaurant listing company Zomato entered the U.S Market through the acquisition of Urbanspoon.com owned by IAC the Internet company focused on the areas of search, applications, online dating, media and ecommerce. The deal was an all-cash transaction for $52 million. Most of Urbanspoon’s team will be joining Zomato and the company will be integrating its Website and mobile apps to Zomato over the next few months.
Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal said, “We felt joining forces with Urbanspoon would be the best way to turbocharge our growth and make our way into the U.S. Canada and Australia.”
Zomato has been actively acquiring companies to enter new markets worldwide. These include:
- Italian restaurant discovery service Cibando
- Polish restaurant search service Gastronauci
- Czech Republic’s restaurant guide Lunchtime.cz and Slovakia’s restaurant guide Obedovat.sk
- New Zealand-based restaurant search service MenuMania
Monetization through advertisements on its mobile apps currently drives majority traffic for the company. Goyal told Medianama that more than 50% of its 35 million visits come from its mobile application across the globe and they have “seen remarkable traction in the two months they have been serving these app ads”.
