Zomato turns profitable, won't charge commission from restaurants: CEO

Online restaurant discovery and food delivery platform Zomato on Tuesday said it has become a profitable company.
“Zomato is now a profitable company. Yes, throughout the 24 countries where we operate, and across all our businesses, we are starting to make money,” Zomato Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said in a blog post.
Zomato’s core advertising business in India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, its three key regions, is generating enough cash to cover for the millions of dollars of investments the firm is making into the rest of the regions and new businesses, he added.
The new businesses for the company include online food ordering, table reservations, Zomato Gold and Zomato Base among others, Goyal wrote in his post.
“We are rolling out a token of appreciation for restaurant owners and small business owners on our food ordering network in India. What’s that? Zero commission for all food orders placed through Zomato”, he further stated.
“For this, they have to qualify based on a set of predefined criteria. Some of these criteria include the number of orders they process with Zomato on a weekly basis, and whether their customers are happy with food and service,” Goyal said.
“As per our current data, 70 per cent of our restaurant partner base qualifies for what we are now calling MissionGiveBack,” he added.
The company had earlier this month acquired last-mile logistics company Runnr for an undisclosed sum to boost its food delivery business.