Zomato buys cloud-based PoS system; to help restaurants manage inventory, payments

Gurgaon-based Zomato Media Pvt Ltd, which owns the restaurant and event-listing site Zomato.com, has acquired MapleGraph Solutions Pvt Ltd, which operated a point-of-sales business, for an undisclosed amount in what is its first acquisition outside its core business of restaurant listings and reviews, it said on Tuesday.

Zomato is now launching its own version of the product under Zomato Base which would allow restaurants manage inventory and payments as well as provide real time analytics and more.

The move would expand the revenue streams for Zomato, which currently draws bulk of its business from ads from restaurants. The firm has been looking at new ways to generate revenues and is starting an online food ordering and table reservation service.

Zomato Base offers inventory and recipe management, analyses sales data to track restaurant's performance, generates electronic receipts, as well as does payment gateway integration and menu management.

Delhi-based MapleGraph was founded in 2011 by Arun Tangri (earlier worked with Microsoft and IBM India), Varun Tangri, (also co-founded Tokkri.com and DealerConnect.in) and Abhishek Rohilla (previously worked with Unisys and Siemens Information Systems).

"Technology has seen very little penetration in the restaurant industry, and we are excited to be driving this change at large scale," said Arun Tangri, co-founder and CEO, MapleGraph.

"There is a lot that can be done if we are able to build a technology platform that connects consumers to restaurants and vice versa, and we believe that a world-class cloud-based POS system is the first step towards building that platform," said Deepinder Goyal, co-founder and CEO, Zomato.

Zomato will work on integrating the POS product's services with the consumer product over the next few months. After the integration, Zomato will start offering Zomato Base to restaurant businesses across the world this fall.

The company is flushed with money raised last week where its existing investors put in $50 million into the firm. This takes Zomato's total funding to over $163 million and comes barely five months after the firm attracted 370 crore ($60 million) in a new round led jointly by Info Edge (India) and Vy Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital. That transaction also included purchase of shares from certain unnamed existing shareholders and valued Zomato at $660 million (post money).

Zomato had earlier raised $53 million from Info Edge (India) and Sequoia Capital over multiple rounds of funding.

Zomato has been actively expanding overseas both organically and through M&As. It has acquired as many as seven companies in the past one year. These acquisitions include MenuMania in New Zealand, Lunchtime (Czech Republic), Obedovat (Slovakia), Gastronauci (Poland), Cibando (Italy), Urbanspoon (US) and Mekanist (Turkey).

The largest of these was Urbanspoon, which also gave it an entry into the US market to face Yelp, the biggest player in the business. The firm acquired Urbanspoon for $52 million using bulk of the fresh money it got from the last funding round.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)