Online restaurant ordering and
discovery portal Zomato acquired logistic technology start-up Sparse Labs, as
it looks to improve the delivery experience. Sparse Labs has developed an
Android based mobile Application which transmits delivery executive’s location
to both the restaurant and the consumer in real time.
This technology is critical as for
Zomato as 80% of its delivery orders are fulfilled by restaurants. Main rival
Swiggy owns its delivery fleet and is counting on controlling the experience as
its differentiator. The company said that the Sparse Labs will be renamed as
Zomato Trace, and will give free of cost to restaurants on Zomato Food delivery
network. Zomato added that restaurants also have the option of using “a
proprietary GPS tracker developed by Sparse that can be fitted onto bikes.”
Till last April, Zomato seemed to
be considerably hungry, acquiring several startups for its kitty. After that,
all was silent for a while, with new of firing and lower valuations. Now,
Zomato seems to be back in the acquisition game. After raising a $50 Million
round recently, with a valuation of over $1 Billion, the company has begun a
buying spree outside its bread and butter restaurant listing companies.
After a bunch of acquisitions
across various geographies, Zomato also acquired MapleGraph to launch Zomato
Base and has just acquired US based NexTable, a restaurant reservations and
table management platform that competes against the likes of Priceline’s
OpenTable and SeatMe from Yelp. The company traffic had reportedly grown three
times after it acquired UrbanSpoon, and the number of restaurants on the
platform supposedly grew seven times and is even present in 23 countries.
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