Founder and CEO of the famous restaurant search and food delivery platform Zomato, Deepinder Goyal, has said that the company is all set to increase growth ten-fold in 5 years. It is hoping to double its profits due to its expansion to new cities that have successfully created thousands of jobs and has benefitted the old and new businesses alike.

Job surge in Zomato

Even though, on Saturday, the company laid off more than 500 employees at its head office in Gurugram including those in customer, merchant, and delivery support teams, Goyal has said that Zomato is creating more jobs than ever.

According to Goyal, Zomato, which started in 2008 by scanning and putting restaurant menus online, has expanded to 24 countries and services 10,000 cities globally. He also said that the company boasts of over 25 million Indian customers in over 500 cities in India and is valued by analysts at between USD 3.6 billion and USD 4.5 billion.

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Talking about its services, Goyal has said that Zomato delivers from about 250,000 restaurants and hundreds of ‘dark kitchens’ where restaurant food is cooked however no restaurant actually exists.

Zomato is backed by Silicon Valley venture fund Sequoia Capital, Singapore government's Temasek Holdings, and Indian e-commerce player Info Edge. According to Goyal, Zomato is hiring people for its technology, product, and data science teams. He also said that the company has, by far hired over 1,200 people in non-delivery teams and another 400 off-rolls positions, in additiona to creating jobs for thousands of delivery partners.

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Milestone alert: Founder Deepinder Goyal

On 5 September, Goyal had tweeted that its delivery partners' monthly income crossed Rs 200 crore for the first time, with the number of delivery partners rising to 2.3 lakh this month against 74,000 in September 2018.

Talking highly of the company’s present position, Goyal said that its losses have come down to 50% in the last three months. He added that Zomato was still investing heavily in the food delivery business, which has grown 6 times in the last year and is now present in more than 500 cities. He also mentioned that Zomato is capable of making a profit any month it wants, but right now its focus is on expanding food delivery business.

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He said that the company feeds 25 million customers every week. The company also generates 0.5 million jobs directly or indirectly. He added that besides bringing business to restaurants and 'dark kitchens', most of which do not have their own delivery service, Zomato also creates direct employment through riders.

Some of the cities that have just become serviceable by the food delivery platform are Alappuzha and Malappuram (Kerala), Pushkar (Rajasthan), Ankleshwar and Mehsana (Gujarat), Kanyakumari, Kodaikanal, and Cuddalore (Tamil Nadu), Itarsi and Ashoknagar (Madhya Pradesh), Fazilka and Nawanshahr (Punjab), Vrindavan and Azamgarh (Uttar Pradesh), Silvassa (Daman), Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh), Daltonganj (Jharkhand), Pataudi (Haryana), Osmanabad and Sawantwadi (Maharashtra) and Shillong (Meghalaya).

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