Former Dealsandyou.com CMO Alok Jain joins Zomato in same position

Gurgaon-based DC Foodiebay Online Services Pvt Ltd, which owns the popular restaurant and event-listing site Zomato, has roped in Smile Group's deal site Dealsandyou.com's chief marketing officer Alok Jain as its CMO. At Zomato, Jain will be responsible for its marketing efforts globally.

Jain had just joined Dealsandyou in January this year and prior to that he worked at GE Capital as territory manager. He is also a serial entrepreneur and has founded startups, including mobile apps company Unyqe, digital marketing solutions company ThinkNet and the now-defunct online digital photo printing company Photmasti. "The number one agenda is to globalise our brand image and to get our website and apps to the masses in every city we launch," said Jain on his new assignment at Zomato. When asked about what made him quit his earlier position in such a short span of time, he said he was looking for a global position which Zomato offered.

IIT-Delhi alumni and ex-Bain employees Deepinder Goyal (CEO) and Pankaj Chaddah set up Zomato in July 2008. Initially, it only catered to Delhi-NCR, but later expanded its services across India as well as abroad (you can check out the date-wise expansion timeline of Zomato here).

In February this year, Info Edge (India) Ltd, which runs the recruitment site Naukri.com and other classifieds such as matrimonial site Jeevansathi.com and real estate portal 99acres.com, invested Rs 55 crore ($10.07 million) more in Zomato. The investment was made by acquiring ordinary shares of Zomato Media, and it took Info Edge's total investment in Zomato to Rs 86.06 crore. Info Edge's holding also rose to 57.9 per cent (from 48.5 per cent), making it the majority shareholder in the company now. The post-money valuation of Zomato stood at around $55 million.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)