Gurgaon-based Zomato Media Pvt Ltd, the company behind popular restaurant listing and review site Zomato.com, has struck its seventh overseas acquisition since July and the second this month with Mekanist, a Turkey-based restaurant search service, as per a company statement.
The company did not disclose the terms of the acquisition.
With the acquisition, the integrated product will be rolled out over the next few months in both Turkish and English. All the Mekanist app users will be able to use the Zomato app. After the integration, Zomato will cover over 75,000 restaurants (from the current 27,500) in Turkey, serving over 3 million users a month.
Zomato will provide hyperlocal advertising model to restaurants, and target customers searching for restaurants in and around their location.
“Mekanist has established itself as one of the heavyweights in the online restaurant search and discovery space in Turkey. Mekanist is one of the first and most successful tech startups to emerge from the Turkish startup ecosystem,†Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO of Zomato, said.
Zomato had started its Turkey operations in November 2013, making its website and apps available to users in Turkish and English. It has a team of 27 people in Turkey, most of whom are based out of the local headquarters in Istanbul.
Founded in 2008, Mekanist is a restaurant discovery and review websites. Just like Zomato, the site also allows restaurants to advertise to targeted audience. It claims to have over 190,000 listed establishments such as the most restaurants, cafes and bars, along with over 500,000 reviews from its 1.5 million strong signed-up user base on web and mobile.
The latest acquisition is the seventh such deal by Zomato since last July. Earlier this month, it acquired Urbanspoon for $52 million to enter the US and Australia markets. It has also acquired Italy-based web and mobile restaurant search services startup Cibando Ltd for an undisclosed sum. Over the last few months it has acquired four other companies, including MenuMania in New Zealand; Lunchtime in the Czech Republic; Obedovat in Slovakia; and Gastronauci in Poland.
Zomato was founded in 2008 by IIT Delhi alumni and ex-Bain employees Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. An online and mobile restaurant discovery service, Zomato provides information such as menus, directions, contact details, pictures and user reviews for over 310,000 restaurants. It claims that it sees around 35 million visits per month across its website and mobile app.
To date, Zomato has raised more than $113 million, over multiple rounds of funding from Info Edge, Vy Capital and Sequoia Capital.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
