Exclusive: Zomato revenue jumps 225 percent to $205 million in Apr-Sep, says #Logout had little impact

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Food-tech and restaurant aggregator Zomato’s revenue in April-September jumped 225 percent to $205 million from $63 million in the same period last year. Zomato said its monthly burn rate is down 60 percent in H1 FY20 (Apr-Sep) from six months ago, by “optimising costs, without affecting new product launches or innovation”, a company result statement noted, of which Forbes India has a copy. Its EBIDTA loss in September 2019, was noted 40 percent lower than March 2019; however, the exact figures were not mentioned.

In the food delivery business, Zomato is now available in 500 cities, up from 200 cities in April 2019. Its orders have jumped a whopping 290 percent, from 214 million in H1 FY20, from just 55 million in H1 FY19. The gross merchandise volume of these orders jumped 223 percent to $821 million, from $254 million in the same period last year. The statement notes that these figures are not reflective of Food@work, which now accounts for approximately an additional 3 million orders. The order volume from the top 15 cities for Zomato doubled in the past year, it says, while the rest make up for about 35 percent of the volume.

The average number of active restaurants on the platform have gone up by 117 percent to 119,000 from 43,000, in H1 FY20. It has seen a jump in the number of average monthly active delivery partners too—from 49,000 to 200,000, a 308 percent jump.

Each user is likely to order 3.6 times per month from the platform, as indicated by the average user order frequency, up from 3.1 in H1 FY19. Its customer support chats per 100 orders is down from 22 to six in H1 FY20, indicating better delivery and order fulfilment.

In dining out, Zomato’s revenues climbed 15 percent from $23.8 million to $27.3 million in H1 FY20. The company notes that in September this year, it had 270,000 restaurant listings in India alone, compared to 110,000 in the same month last year. Its numbers for table booking have gone up “organically, with zero investments”, from 800,000 in January 2019 to 1.3 million bookings in September.

Zomato Gold memberships—the key issue of the #Logout campaign championed by the National Restaurants Association of India earlier this year—for the platform jumped 180 percent from 0.5 million in September 2018 to 1.4 million worldwide in the same month this year. “So far, less than 5 percent restaurants participate in Zomato Gold, and less than 5 percent of our MAUs [monthly active users] are Gold members. There’s so much headroom to grow here,” the statement notes.

The 1+1 and 2+2 membership club is now available in 54 cities globally as of September 2019, compared to 20 cities in the same month last year. “At the start of the #Logout campaign, we had about 6,100 restaurants in India on Zomato Gold (for Dining Out); as of today, we have approximately 6,300 restaurants in India on Gold (for dining out). In addition to that, we have 10,000 restaurants that are participating in recently launched Zomato Gold for delivery. The number of restaurants participating in Gold outside of India stands at 6,500.”