Urbanspoon, a restaurant review and search app that is popular in Canada, the United States and Australia, has been sold to an India-based company.
Zomato, headquartered in Delhi, has purchased the U.S.-based Urbanspoon for $US60 million.
This transaction will mean the end of the Urbanspoon name as the app and review site will be changing to Zomato.
Deepinder Goyal, Zomato founder and CEO, told Business in Vancouver he is not worried in the long term about the loss of brand recognition as the well-known app changes its name, but that it could be challenging in the short term.
“We will end up getting a great product and over time the brand recognition for the model will be more or equal to what Urbanspoon has right now,” Goyal said. We are just going to redirect all the traffic to Zomato. Eight million in Canada alone will be using Zomato the day we switch.
“I don’t think we’ll have to promote the brand that much.”
Goyal founded Zomato seven years ago at the age of 24. He is now 31.
This is Zomato’s sixth acquisition in as many months, having recently purchased restaurant review sites in New Zealand, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Italy. After this latest purchase, the Indian company will have reviews for over 1 million restaurants worldwide and be present in 22 countries. In Canada alone, it will have 60,000 listings.
The changeover to the Zomato name will take place March 22.
