For the first time in almost eight years, restaurant search and review website Zomato.com expects to register profit in India and the company says it could be as early as June, 2016.
This comes as a sharp contrast with the present status of the market with the closing down of many food-tech start ups in India like Dazo, Spoon Joy recently
Zomato itself was facing operational issues in the last six months and it had laid off around 300 of its staff. Zomato's competitors Foodpanda and TinyOwl were also going through the same phase.
“We can now channelize the profits to grow faster and compete harder in countries where we see significant competition,” Pankaj Chaddah, co-founder of Zomato told Mint.
“We have more than doubled our revenue year-on-year for the last few years, and we are going to post some great growth numbers this year as well. We are profitable in six of the 18 markets we are the market leaders in,” Deepinder Goyal, Co-founder and CEO of Zomato was quoted as saying in the same article.
“The fundamental model of our business is that in mature markets we should make profits and they shouldn’t need any more outside money to grow,” Goyal told Reuters.
The company is confident of breaking even in United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Qatar, the Philippines and Indonesia.
The country is currently operating in 23 countries and claims of holding the pole position in 28 of them.
Zomato which used to collect most of its earnings from the subscription paid by restaurateurs entered the food delivery business only recently.