Zomato enters events industry with food carnival in multiple cities

Zomato, an Indian food delivery and restaurant search startup, has announced that it is entering the events business with ‘Zomaland’, a multi-city food and entertainment carnival. Reportedly, this move would mark the company’s entry into the large-scale experiential events space.

The company said in a statement that the carnival would be bringing some of the top music artists and DJs, photo booths and carnival games, eateries and chefs together from across the nation. The carnival will also include a dedicated zone for the children and have street performances.

Gaurav Gupta, COO of Zomato, mentioned that the out-of-home food cooking theme or the restaurant channel would be dominant in the future and the company is trying to boost that as much as it can. Zomaland’s introduction is a step forward towards the company’s goal of better food for more people.

The company informed that this multi-city carnival would start in January in Delhi, then come in February to Pune and the following month in Bengaluru. Each of these cities would have over 100 eateries spread over 8 food zones and user registrations are open on the company’s app.

Zomato Live’s Global Head, Chaitanya Mathur, was quoted saying that though the company is starting out with only 3 cities, it would look to extend the experience to a lot more cities across the globe.

Reports show that Zomato has been engaged around various developments recently, which include drone-based food delivery, hiring and exit of top management, among others. The company has raised $653.8 million in funding so far over 11 rounds. The most recent one was a $210 million funding from Ant Financial, the Chinese Alibaba Group’s affiliate company.

Zomato has apparently been in fierce competition with Swiggy for leading the foodtech market, which is projected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 12 percent from 2016 to 2021, as reported by TechSci Research, a market research firm.