From Foodiebay to becoming India’s first FoodTech platform to sign up for IPO: Here’s how Zomato changed food marketing in India in 13 years

• Zomato's ₹ 9,375 crore initial public offering (IPO) opens for subscription today.
• We take a close look at Zomato’s marketing strategy, which has helped the brand grow leaps and bounds in 13 years and none of its success would have been possible without its witty campaigns.

With the online food delivery market at the cusp of evolution, Zomato signs for its initial public offering (IPO) today. All eyes are on Zomato, afterall it is India’s first-ever foodtech brand to go public. The Zomato IPO will also be the second largest share sale after the ₹ 10,355 crore IPO from SBI Cards and Payment Services last year.

The huge buzz and anticipation reflected in this tweet by Zomato.


The global FoodTech giant that we know today, started as a small discovery and review platform Foodiebay in 2008 and today, it is a multinational company with its presence across 16 countries.

Before launching Foodiebay, Zomato’s co-founder Deepinder Goyal had already experienced failure in this category with his earlier online food delivery platform named foodlet.com. He got together with Pankaj Chaddah, who left four years ago, and started Zomato. By the end of 2008, Zomato became Delhi’s largest online directory of restaurants.

Zomato has grown leaps and bounds since 2008 and none of this would have been possible withouts its robust marketing strategy. It hasn’t just served us good food, it has also kept us well-entertained with its engaging marketing strategy across all platforms.

Twitter

It has kept its messaging simple and relatable that often elicits a huge response from the audience. According to Talkwaker, Zomato’s Twitter account adopts a tone that is frivolous, witty and sometimes even counter intuitive. It often asks a question on Twitter to engage with its audience.


Today, it has 1.4 million followers on Twitter. With this one tweet, Zomato started a trend and many brands jumped onto the bandwagon.


From PUBG’s ban to when Rashi-ben put an empty cooker on the Rasoda, Zomato’s always the first brand to be a part of social media trends.



Zomato’s email marketing strategy

Zomato’s marketing strategy is refreshing and relatable. It tries to leverage humour whenever, wherever possible. While email marketing seems like a dying phenomenon, Zomato has proven time and again that if you do it right, consumers click and order.

Food-tech firm Zomato is known for its powerful visuals, bold colours and humour. It is that one brand whose emails you don’t want to unsubscribe to.

Its email marketing is based on food insights and eating behaviour. During the lockdown, parents were quite skeptical about ordering food online. So, Zomato reached out to its mailer base with a smart, witty solution or cheat-sheet.

Zomato once imagined what Biryani’s curriculum vitae would look like and won our hearts.

It often sends topical emails as well.

Zomato’s Out-of-home marketing

Experts often say that pictures do well on billboards but Zomato has proved them wrong time and again. It always sticks to its brand colors and it is easy to spot a Zomato ad even between heavily crowded Mumbai streets from a distance away

Even if you are Indiranagar ka gunda, you would stop your vehicle to read these billboards for a good laugh.

How to make you laugh and salivate at the same time? Zomato knows it well.

Zomato’s best marketing campaigns

When it turned a bad advertisement into one of the most talked-about marketing campaigns

In September 2020, after consumers felt tired of watching Zomato’s YouTube and TV ads, a few of them took to social media platforms to make fun of the brand for its Butter Chicken ad. However, Zomato took this criticism in its stride and came up with a rather smart idea that not only helped it come up with some fun campaign ideas, it also helped win brownie points with its consumers.

The food-tech firm has admitted that its “YouTube ads suck!” and opened the floor for consumers to send in their entries for a creative ad. Apart from the novelty of the idea of crowdsourcing an ad, the fact that Zomato admitted that it is as tired of watching its Youtube ad as its consumer, made Zomato win a lot of hearts for its honesty.

Zomato also gave ₹25,00,000 to the winner of this marketing contest.


It isn’t just humour, Zomato knows how to bring about social change as well. On Women’s day in 2020, Zomato released an ad featuring PV Sindhu’s dad cooking. With the hashtag #SoWhatIfIDontCook, the brand celebrated women for their skills and work other than cooking, unlike that expected of an ‘ideal’ woman. It reminded the audience that cooking is a choice, not a woman’s ‘duty.’


It has also tried to keep its employees and delivery partners first with various campaigns.

Humour can be a powerful tool to get your point across and from various pop culture references to punning their way into our inboxes, Zomato has done it all.

*All images embedded in this article were downloaded from Zomato's Twitter handle*