Zomato was a side project for restaurant menus — it became India's food delivery giant

In July 2008, Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah were employees at Bain & Company in Delhi. Goyal was frustrated by the difficulty of finding restaurant menus online. He wanted to order food but could not find a single source that listed menus and prices. As a side project, he built a simple website called FoodieBay that listed restaurant menus and allowed user reviews.

The site was not a business. Goyal and Chaddah ran it in their spare time, updating menus manually and sharing the link with friends. But the site grew by word of mouth. Soon, strangers were using it. By late 2009, the side project was taking more time than their Bain jobs. In November 2009, both quit consulting to work on the site full-time.

The company was renamed Zomato in November 2010 to avoid a trademark conflict with eBay and to allow expansion beyond food. The site expanded from Delhi to other Indian cities in 2011. International expansion followed in 2012, reaching the UAE, UK, US, and Australia. Zomato acquired Urbanspoon in 2015, entering the United States and Australia.

Zomato entered food delivery in India in 2015, competing with Swiggy. In 2020, it acquired Uber Eats India in an all-stock deal. By FY25, Zomato reported revenue of ₹94.18 billion. A side project built by a frustrated consultant had become India's largest food discovery and delivery platform.