Zomato H1 revenue triples to $205 mn despite #logout campaign

Restaurant aggregator and food delivery platform Zomato's revenue increased 225% to $205 million in the first half of financial year 2019-20 from $63 million in the same period last year.

The Gurugram-based company said in its earnings report that its monthly burn rate is down 60% due to optimising costs without affecting new product launches or innovation.

Zomato is now available in 500 cities, up from 200 cities in April 2019, for its food delivery business. It completed 214 million orders in the first half of this financial year, averaging about 35 million orders a month and recording a GMV (Gross merchandise volume) of $821 million. 

The order volume from the top 15 cities for Zomato doubled in the past year while the rest make up for about 35% of the volume, the report said.

The average monthly transacting users increased from 3.6 million in H1FY19 to 11.2 million H1FY20 while increasing order frequency to 3.6 times a month from 3.1 in the same period.

In the dining out segment, Zomato’s revenues went up 15% from $23.8 million in H1FY19 to $27.3 million in H1FY20.

“The number of restaurant listings globally on Zomato has grown from 1.2 million in September 2018 to 1.5 million in September 2019. Half of this increase comes from India alone. This huge increase is a testament to the pace at which restaurants are mushrooming all over India, and grabbing share from home kitchens,” the company said.

The numbers for table bookings have gone up from 800,000 in January 2019 to 1.3 million in September 2019, it said.

The report did touch upon the much-talked #logout movement led by the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) where restaurants opted out of Zomato’s Gold membership programme that allowed customers to get a dish or a drink free of cost.

Gold memberships went up 180% from 0.5 million in September 2018 to 1.4 million worldwide in the same month this year, the report said. 

“From a restaurateur point of view, Gold is not for everyone. We always encourage restaurants to determine if participating in Zomato Gold makes commercial sense for them. A number of restaurants who have returned to Zomato Gold post these changes have seen a 100% increase in revenue,” the report added.