Zomato buys out Urbanspoon to enter US

Popular restaurant search application provider Zomato Tuesday announced acquiring Urbanspoon, a leading restaurant discovery application, for an unspecified amount to foray into the US and Australia.

"The all-cash deal acquisition marks our entry into the US and establishes our presence in Australia and Canada," the start-up firm said in a statement here.

Post-acquisition, the Zomato application will provide information on million restaurants across 22 countries, including India, with features such as scanned menus and photos to enable users' rate and review the listed eateries and create a network of foodies for recommending them through Urbanspoon application.

"Our US entry has been on cards, as Urbanspoon app has a strong presence there as in Britain, while it has a dominate restaurant search in Australia and Canada," Zomato founder chief executive Deepinder Goyal said in the statement.

With a huge following, Urbanspoon is a default search app for legions of people who are passionate about food.

"We will soon integrate the two applications to bring the best of them to our users in the US and in other countries where we are present," Goyal said.

Zomato's traffic is expected to touch 80 million from 35 million visits per month with the use of both applications.

Urbanspoon is Zomato's sixth and biggest acquisition in the last six months, which include dominant search players in New Zealand, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Italy.

"Zomato had phenomenal growth in recent years and our customer bases complement each othera¿s. With investments in people and technology, it will bring to our customers, restaurant owners and food bloggers new capabilities and features," Urbanspoon chief executive Keela Robison said.