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Online food delivery startup Zomato has invested undisclosed amount in Hyderabad-based home chef aggregator TinMen. The investment comes barely a week after Zomato acquired Bengaluru-based logistics and food delivery startup Runnr. These latest consolidation moves will supposedly help the company in competing against the arch rival Swiggy, which over the years has steadily increased the market share in food delivery market.
With the acquisition of TinMen, Zomato hopes to crack the home cook meal market, which is still dominated by organized players. TinMen is basically a home-cooked meal delivery app that aggregates home chefs on its platform and currently offers services only in 10 areas in Hyderabad. However, the startup very well plans to expand across other cities of India in coming months.
Tinmen’s expansion plans were clearly disclosed by Zomato co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal, who wrote on company’s official blog that both startups will initially focus on Hyderabad city and later on will expand to other cities of India.
Hyderabad based Tinmen boosts pretty good monthly tractions. The company claims that it currently delivers 30,000 meals per month, cooked by over 100 expert home chefs.
Zomato is on a roll
The restaurant discovery & food delivery startup certainly seems to have found back its mojo, after struggling for nearly one & half years due to heavy cash burn rate and growing losses. The company recently announced that it has become profitable in all the 24 countries that it currently operates across.
Zomato trimmed the cash burn rate by whopping 81% to $12 million in 2016-17 from $64 million in the same period a year ago. The company saw its revenue increase by impressive 80% to $49 million, while revenue from the food ordering business witnessed an almost eight fold increase to reach $9 million.
In another positive development, last week Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) revoked campus placement ban on Zomato and other 30 startup. This move should help the company in hiring better and highly skilled talents in coming years. Zomato and other Indian startups were slapped with the placement ban almost a year ago, following their withdrawal of job offers to several IIT students that subsequently left them in state of despair.
