Restaurant site Zomato high on social integration; To go global soon

Gurgaon-based DC Foodiebay Online Services Pvt Ltd, which owns the popular restaurant site Zomato, has announced some 'cool' social features on the portal. Under this new feature, users writing regular reviews can be followed by other reviewers and vice versa.  Whenever there is a new review, everyone on the network will get a notification. Users can also invite friends to write reviews and read theirs.  Currently, here is no option to comment on a review, but more features will be rolled out in future.

"We have updated another feature where in when you are searching for a particular restaurant or a place to go, snippets of who (among your friends) has recently eaten at what restaurants (pops up)," Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO, Zomato.

In March, Goyal had told techcircle that they will be integrating Facebook in a big way. Following up on that, Goyal informed that a new feature, which is basically a Facebook app, that will put a small Zomato widget on to the users' Facebook timeline. Whatever activity they do on Zomato will automatically come on their profiles on Facebook also. "This new feature would be functional in a few days time, subject to Facebook test though," informed Goyal.

Zomato is also going global soon. It is starting with Singapore, where a 20-strong team is already in place. The Singapore operations will begin in September this year. This year the 'foodie' portal plans to expand to Hong Kong, Dubai and Moscow.

Zomato (formerly known as Foodiebay) was started in 2008 by IIT-Delhi alumni Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. Both of them worked with the consulting giant Bain & Company before starting the venture. Zomato is an online food directory which provides extensive information to help users choose where to dine. Backed by public-listed Internet firm Info Edge (India) Ltd, the company behind the popular job site Naukri.com, Zomato received two rounds of funding worth nearly $4 million (Rs 22 crore). It is now looking to raise third round of funding to back its international plans.