Info Edge to invest Rs 13.5cr in Zomato.com

Info Edge has committed to investing an additional Rs 13.5 crore (USD 3 million) in online food and lifestyle portal Zomato.com.

Info Edge had earlier invested about Rs 4.7 crore (around USD 1 million) in August last year to fund Zomato.com's (then Foodiebay.com) product development, sales and marketing efforts, Zomato.com said in a statement today.

"Zomato.com is one of India's fastest growing consumer internet portals...We see immense potential in their current model, in their future plans and the capability of the team to execute it well," Info Edge Founder and Executive Vice-Chairman Sanjeev Bhikhchandani said.

Zomato.com has expanded to 10 cities (Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Chandigarh) and increased its coverage from 7,000 restaurants to 18,000 restaurants, while its online user base has increased from 1.5 lakh to over 10 lakh.

The portal now plans to focus on using the investment to further scale up operations to drive both its existing and new verticals and increase its brand visibility.

"We plan to use these funds to further scale our operations, enrich user experience on both our web and mobile products, and increase our reach in the market. We have recently moved into events and an e-commerce section is in the pipeline," Zomato.com Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said.

The second round of funding will also go into building a strong foundation for these new verticals, Goyal added.