Food-delivery platform Zomato introduced its ‘District’ application for iOS and Android users. The app will provide dining services to customers and enable booking tickets for movies, sports, live performances, etc.
After tapping into food delivery services through Zomato and the quick commerce vertical, Blinkit, the company has started out its third segment of going out services through the District app.
In August, Zomato acquired the entertainment and ticketing business of Paytm for ₹2,048.4 crore or $244 million to strengthen its going-out vertical.
Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal, in the Q1FY25 shareholders letter, said, “Today, Zomato and Blinkit are our two large consumer businesses, and both of them serve customers’ needs at home. However, we also have one of India’s largest ‘going-out’ businesses. Our dining-out business which helps our customers discover restaurants when they want to go out and dine at restaurants. This dining-out business is now operating at a run-rate of $500m+ annualised GOV and is already profitable.”
Goyal explained the intention of the company to expand its going out business as well.
“We believe that there is an opportunity to further expand our going-out offering, building on top of our dining-out business. Additional use cases for customers in the going out space include – movies, sports ticketing, live performances, shopping, staycations etc., some of which we have already launched, or are building as we speak,” Goyal said.
“Building a one stop destination app for going-out could be a game changer for each of these use cases, and we intend to do exactly that with our new District (by Zomato) app. If we execute this well, we see going-out becoming the 3rd large B2C business emerging out of Zomato,” he added.
Zomato’s ticketing services through its District app will reportedly face competition from BookMyShow, backed by Reliance.
Recently, the Zomato Board has approved raising ₹8,500 crorethrough a qualified institutional placement (QIP) as a buffer to strengthen finances in a competitive market, the company stated in its Q2FY25 earnings statement.
Meanwhile, Zomato launched a new feature on Sunday to reduce food wastage by offering cancelled orders to customers at ‘unbeatable’ prices. According to Deepinder Goyal, the company records around 4 lakh order cancellations every month.
