How Zomato’s marketplace is redefining dining experiences

Zomato is an enterprising marketplace that connects restaurants and their customers. Billed as a food delivery, dining and restaurant discovery service, the brand was founded in India and is now present in 24 countries, including Portugal, where it's operated since 2014.

Since landing in Portugal, Zomato has grown significantly, becoming the leading restaurant discovery app in Portugal. In the delivery marketplace it's still scratching the surface of the opportunity, with some 40,000 restaurants in Portugal yet to join the digital economy. It's a huge opportunity that Zomato is determined to capture by positioning the platform as a trusted partner that supplies restaurants with the tools they need to grow. 

Yael Barack, Checkout.com: What changes are you seeing in consumer habits, and what are the challenges for the food and restaurant industries?

Nuno Fernandes, Zomato: The pandemic has significantly impacted consumption, dining out, and deliveries. New patterns have emerged, and people are making more informed decisions about where they want to go and why. There’s a consumer shift based on digitalization and having more market information about restaurants. 

Restaurants need to use every resource to maximize their businesses and respond to the growing digital demand from consumers. Right now, we see an imbalance between customers and restaurants. Customers are more up to speed with digital adoption, whereas restaurants lag because they’re used to operating offline. We must empower restaurants to enter the digital marketplace confidently and give them the tools to supercharge their growth. 

Yael Barack, Checkout.com: How is Zomato responding to industry challenges? What makes you uniquely positioned to help businesses transform? 

Nuno Fernandes, Zomato: There are two main steps we can take. First, we can ensure there is enough information to promote digital transformation and digital capabilities. It's not just a matter of creating an ecosystem. It means connecting daily, weekly, and monthly with the restaurants on our platform. 

The second way is by ensuring all our solutions focus on personalization, so it’s essential to meet restaurants' specific needs and expectations and avoid a generalized approach. 

Yael Barack, Checkout.com: Efficient payments help to create positive digital experiences and grow revenue. You've trusted Checkout.com to deliver the solutions that enable you to do that. What were your requirements? 

Nuno Fernandes, Zomato: There are two parts of the equation. First, we need to ensure that we deliver what customers expect at the checkout. That means a secure and streamlined checkout experience. And it means allowing them to pay using their preferred payment methods. 

The second piece revolves around our sellers. A lot of businesses in our market are not digitally mature. To bring them to our platform, we must make the onboarding process straightforward while meeting our regulatory requirements. And to earn their trust and keep them on the platform, we must give them full transparency into their financial flows and fast access to liquidity. 

Checkout.com delivers on these requirements, maximizing revenue for Zomato and our restaurants. 

Yael Barack, Checkout.com: Your point about focusing on sellers is fascinating. Marketplaces are increasingly competing for restaurants and to have the best sellers as part of the network. Let's double-click into what you're doing to support sellers. 

Nuno Fernandes, Zomato:  Our job is to allow restaurants to focus on what they do best: delivering dining experiences to their customers. That means we must remove as much complexity as possible from their operations. That's one of the reasons we've partnered with Checkout.com. It allows us to do that better than any other provider.

Checkout.com's marketplace solution automatically reconciles every funding event, giving Zomato and our restaurants an always-on view of performance and cash flow. This is a game-changer for our restaurants. It’s incredibly challenging for them to check and reconcile payments across different marketplaces. The fact we provide them with this visibility through a single Zomato dashboard empowers them to manage cash flow better and invest in their business growth with confidence. 

The equation is simple. The more value we deliver to our sellers through initiatives like this, the more loyal they become. It's a true win-win. 

Yael Barack, Checkout.com: How has your experience been working with Checkout.com thus far? Have we met your expectations?

Nuno Fernandes, Zomato: It's been exemplary. Given the complexity of payments and regulations, you can’t develop a meaningful relationship with a payments partner if you don’t have transparent conversations. From day one, we had a very clear understanding with Checkout.com, and everyone we've dealt with knows how to meet our expectations. 

Personalization was equally important. A one-size-fits-all approach certainly doesn’t work in the Portuguese market. Any partner must listen to our feedback and respond in the right way. Checkout.com did that and even asked for more input to better customize the solution for our unique requirements. 

The way Checkout.com work also stands out. We instantly connected and found a seamless way of working. Checkout.com also committed the resources necessary to deploy the solution in the timeframe we needed. And the team supported us at every step and continues to do so, which gives us immense confidence going forward.   

Yael Barack, Checkout.com: What does success look like for Zomato in the next twelve months, and what role does Checkout.com play?

Nuno Fernandes, Zomato: There are limitless opportunities. The Portuguese market is still not very digitized, and there’s a lot we can do for payments and online presence. There are more than 50,000 restaurants in Portugal, and only around 2,000 are digital. That’s a massive opportunity for us to scale and help restaurants transform their businesses, and Checkout.com is a critical partner that will enable us to do this.