Top Posts Tagged with #product-2

Introducing the new Zomato

Over the past few months, we've taken Zomato to new shores (Brazil, Turkey, and Indonesia, to name a few, with more on the way) and we realized that our product that worked wonderfully in the countries we're in, didn't quite match up to the expectations of what people were really looking for. What followed was a lot of talking to a lot of people who use Zomato regularly. Understanding how they use it. What they like about it. And more importantly, what it is that they dislike. Here are some things we heard from our users: Can you please make my search quicker and easier? Given the number of listings on Zomato, I have to spend a lot of time figuring out that perfect place to eat. Reduce the number of low-value reviews. Only show what is useful and relevant. Filter out the junk, and make it easy for me to read reviews from the people I choose to follow on Zomato. Can I please make Zomato my one-stop food journal? I would like to keep a record of what I ate, with pictures and reviews. A food journal of sorts. Can I get recommendations for places I might like from the people I follow? Make it easy for me to know what my friends are eating and what they like. There are some reviewers who don't understand the 5-point rating scale. The minimum rating they give is a 3 out of 5. Is there a way to normalize their effect on a restaurant's overall rating? Too many restaurants lie between 3.0 and 3.5 out of 5. It makes choosing very difficult. Is there a way to force rankings for restaurants in a city, like classroom rankings? All these questions and insights changed the way we think about Zomato. We also realized that in order to incorporate these things, we'd have to effectively rebuild the way Zomato works from scratch, without changing the basics that everyone is used to. Starting today, you will see a new Zomato. On the web, and on your mobile devices. We have completely rebuilt and redesigned the experience, and have tried to address most of the issues that have been bugging our users and giving us (many) sleepless nights. So here's what we did:

Q: Can you please make my search faster?

Searching for a place to eat is now easier than ever. While the easily-recognizable search bar stays, it's packing a lot of intelligence behind the scenes. Just start typing what you want - whether it's a restaurant, a cuisine, or a particular dish - and you'll find the suggestions rolling in. So now, instead of typing “<restaurant name> Zomato” on Google, you can get more than you bargained for with the new Zomato search. To be honest, it doesn't sound as cool when we talk about it, so we'd rather you see it for yourself.

Q: Can you reduce the number of low-value reviews on Zomato?

Now, for any restaurant, you will see three tabs for reviews: - Popular: These are reviews that score the highest in terms of value, based on our algorithm. - Following: This filters out everything else and shows reviews written only by people you follow. - All: As the name suggests, this shows all reviews for the restaurant by everyone sorted in a reverse chronological order. We will keep the low-value (junk/spam/fake) reviews away from you. P.S.: If you get junk from the people you followed, please unfollow them.

Q: Where's my food journal?

Any food experience worth having is a food experience worth sharing. We've made it way easier to upload pictures while on the move (and we've also ensured that these features work as advertised :)). Add reviews for places you've been to, add to them with amazing pictures, using our dramatically improved photo filters. Tell the world where you've been eating, and let them follow your food journey.

Q: Can I know what my friends like?

Say hello to the Feed. It's where you can see all the gastronomic activity of foodies you follow on Zomato. If you come across a place that looks interesting, you can add it to your Wishlist straight from the Feed. Over time, add every place that you want to visit to your Wishlist. Then, when you're actually looking for a place, you can just swipe to the 'In Wishlist' section in search results, so you don't need to spend time hunting through hundreds of options.

Q: Can you normalise a user's ratings?

This has been now built into the system, to ensure that an overly positive or negative bias doesn't affect the restaurant's rating dramatically. We will adjust a user's input for a restaurant according to his rating bias. For people who are always tough, their ratings will be adjusted upwards. For the ones who are always overly nice, their ratings will be adjusted downwards. You won't see this directly, but it will affect the aggregate rating that we show for restaurants.

Q: There are too many restaurants clustered in the 3.0-3.5 bracket. Can you prevent this?

Yes, and this is a big change you will have to get used to. Now, we have ranked all the 221,000 restaurants on a normal distribution curve. Here's what the change looks like. This should make it easier for all of us to decide where we should go out to eat. This is the most personalized Zomato has ever been. In fact, the new system allows each of us to create and own a mini-Zomato. There's so much to bite into in this release, it feels like all our previous versions were made to whet appetites for this one. This is the big one; the main course. All this comes with a complete overhaul of the interface of the website and apps. More importantly, we've redefined the UX altogether. We've ironed out a lot of things to ensure that Zomato is super easy for everyone to use. You will also come across a few features we haven't mentioned here, but hey - we want to leave something as a surprise ;) All these good things come with one small trade-off. To get to know you better and save your preferences to make sure that we can serve you what you'd like to see, Zomato will now be a login-only product. There will no longer be a “Nevermind” (that was a subtle Nirvana reference, for those of you who missed it) button at the bottom of the app login screen. But once you're in, you'll know why. We've pulled out the stops to make sure that you will love the new Zomato. So please take it for a spin, and let us know what you think. We are always listening at [email protected] or on Twitter

#launch #product #product-2

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Going global? Here's what we have learnt.

Earlier this week, we took a baby step towards becoming an international company by rolling out the Dubai section on Zomato.com. Incidentally, right before we made our Dubai section live, I read this article on Pluggd.in by Prashant Singh, which I had loved. The article nailed some of the crucial reasons why start-ups in India can (or cannot) go global, and what to expect when the naysayers throw the kitchen sink at you. We experienced some of the same jitters a year ago, when international expansion started looking like an inevitable part of our future. Here are some thoughts on the story so far and some lessons we hope to carry forward on this journey. It's about the product: One cardinal truth that trumps absolutely everything, including a business idea, is that you need to have a world-class product. If you are building “for the Indian Market", you kind of have it backwards. The distinction should not exist in the first place when it comes to the quality of the product. You can have features that cater to the Indian market (see Delivery, Cash-on), but the look and feel of the product, and the features that it offers should be nothing short of what the most discerning user will want. If, at any point of time, you have said - chalta hai - because it's only for the Indian user, you are not ready. We weren't ready either, until we were. Understand your roots: While it may sound borderline cheesy, it's very important to understand where you come from. Our success in the Indian market is a product of our content platform. Building an operation that updates 40,000 menus in 12 cities every three months is no joke. Replicating it in another country with a new team is a whole different story. When we sat down with a map and started evaluating markets where we wish to go, the probability of replicating our operations model was paramount. There are markets out there that are ripe for a product like ours, but probably have socio-economic factors like cost of labour that will make our model unsustainable. We are choosing to stick to what we are geared for, and what we understand. Personally, I do not like the idea of trying to operate in a new language while also re-inventing our operations. If you don't know your limitations, you are not ready. Who comes first, the user or the merchant? It’s always the user, except when you are trying to evaluate the market. We can go to a market with the highest rates of internet penetration - but unless the merchants (in our case the restaurant industry) are playing ball, we will be making sandcastles by ourselves very soon. This is an issue that transcends industries. While we want to be involved in a huge market place, the ease of doing business with local merchants dominates the eventual decision. In order to source revenue from a local market, you have to understand the business-to-business environment. For instance, we look at signs in the local market of restaurants advertising in print, hoardings or even radio advertisement. If they are willing to engage with any platform (including online) we can work with them and show them the value proposition in our model. If you cannot clearly identify who is going to butter your bread, you are not ready. Hit the streets: There is – and I cannot stress this enough - no alternative to doing your market research first-hand. Maybe once you are big enough and can hire a Bain and Company team to size up the market opportunity for you in three neat slides, can you afford to enter a new market while chilling in India. Until then - there is no option but to sweat it out at the highest level. The biggest asset in a start-up is usually the entrepreneur who has learned the ins and outs of the business the hard way. There is no amount of market research and savvy internet searches that can replace the inherent intuition of the "wrinkled, war-hardened" entrepreneur (see @pankajchaddah). If you aren't willing to melt in the Dubai summer [see below ;-)] to launch two weeks after Ramadan, despite being the founder of a successful Indian startup, you are not ready. Know your government and theirs: One of the biggest advantages that Indian start-ups have is the ability to work in uncertain and haphazard business environments. Leveraging that advantage is important, but walk through that immigration line with a comprehensive understanding of the challenges. One of the surprising revelations going through international expansion is the realisation that doing business in India can be a cakewalk as compared to the business environment in some other places. Abroad, incorporation paperwork can be onerous, labor laws stifling, and the access to basic business services can be severely limited. This doesn't mean working abroad through an India-based company is piece of cake either. Any start-up that has tried to get authorisation for the automatic route of capital transfer can relate to the bewildering lack of clarity around these regulations. So, if you think doing business in India is tough, you are not ready. Save a few bullets: We have now spent a considerable amount of time (over a year and counting) building features that don't necessarily add value to our Indian business, but are thought to be evolutionary steps in the growth of Zomato on a global level. We might not be able to turn them on in every market we enter, but it’s comforting to know we brought a gun to a knife fight. So, unless you are at a stage in your evolution where you can afford to build a few features - just so you can be ready for a variety of new challenges - you are not ready. Albinder Dhindsa is the Head of International Expansion at Zomato. Follow his rants on twitter at @albinder

#platform #product-2 #tradecraft #user-experience

Zomato - update and what's cooking?

We've had a great 2012 so far! Starting with cleaning up after the massive New Year's ticketing initiative that we pulled off (which went very very well for us as an organization), we have further strengthened our restaurant content base and and now have in-depth info for close to 30,000 restaurants on Zomato. Number of users are at an all time high for both our web and mobile platforms. Our Events section has seen tremendous growth and we have also been lucky to partner with some major events across cities (Comedy Store, Lucky Ali concerts, M.A.D Festival in Ooty, Annual Comedy Festival, Essel World and many more). We are excited with all the activity happening at Zomato and we wanted to take some time to update you on what we’ve been working on over the last few months.

We have three major updates for you:

Launch of our print guide: Yes you read it right “print”! We’ve just moved into print with the launch of ‘Citibank Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012’ for 4 cities in India – Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune; more cities next year!

Web: we made things better for you on the web - it should be now easier for you to narrow down to the restaurant to go to or an event to attend.

Mobile: Windows Phone native app launched and this is the first time we’ve introduced Events on a mobile platform.

Lets dive into each one in more detail:

1) Print guide: Citibank Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012

We are expanding to the print medium by launching the “Citibank Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012” for 4 cities – Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune. Being published by the world-renowned Hachette Book Group, Citibank Zomato Restaurant Guide 2012 is already available for pre booking on Flipkart (short url: zoma.to/guides). Ok. So why print? Over time, we want to be the brand which people look up when they need to decide where to eat. And we want to be platform agnostic. We know that there will always be a segment which will appreciate the paperback guide to good food around them. But, almost all Food Guides in the market today are directories/ yellow-pages for restaurants, which provide basic info but do not aid users much in taking a decision quickly (it really takes ages for people to decide where to eat after looking at these encyclopedic guides). After all, the search for an appropriate place is based not only on cuisine, price and location but also the 'occasion' or 'mood'. Our Restaurant Guide is an endeavor to solve this problem. So what we created are unique 'occasion' based guides that recommend restaurants based on different needs (or use cases) that we have observed our users looking out for. Ranging from Romantic Dinner, Beer in a Bar, Girls’ Night Out to Dining with Kids, the guide shall take you through the best recommendations for all key occasions. So, if you have you ever asked your friends “where can I take my girlfriend for a nice romantic dinner?” or “what's a great place to grab a couple of beers after work?”, our restaurant guides will answer the questions for you. It is not an encyclopedia of restaurants but a carefully designed list of recommendations for a particular ‘occasion’. The guide is already available for pre-order on Flipkart and will be launched in the second week of May 2012.

2) Web: A whole new Zomato experience

We’ve just released a new version of Zomato on the web with a plethora of changes. The primary focus of the updates has been to provide the best user experience possible for anyone looking to discover or search for restaurants or events. We believe the latest version of Zomato does exactly that and are looking forward to our users explore what we have to offer in a totally new way.

Restaurants section

A new lean and mean user interface: The look and feel of the new design is minimalistic and the focus is on presenting the content in a much better format. Users should be able to search, use filters and browse restaurant info much more quickly than before.

Top 25 restaurants in the city: For a foodie, one question is always on the mind “Which are the best places to eat in this city right now?” Highlighted on the homepage, this section provides the top 25 trending restaurants based on user data on a weekly basis to cater to that craving.

Improved Search functionality: I admit that our search is not great, hence striving towards an improved one. The new Zomato search is a little more intelligent and identifies if you are looking for a cuisine in a locality and also has an intrinsic spell check.

Foodie credibility and a better user profile: Our users take a lot of time and effort to share their experiences with the foodie community on Zomato through user reviews and we constantly take actions to build this into a strong community. With Foodie credibility, we want to reward (virtually) people who are the most active and respected members of the Zomato community. We have also given a "Sort by reviewer credibility" filter to everyone to quickly get to read reviews from the most seasoned foodies. Currently, based on the number of reviews submitted we are classifying users into the following 4 categories (the numbers might increase in the future):

Foodie: upto 10 reviews

Big Foodie: upto 20 reviews

Super Foodie: upto 35 reviews

Connoisseur: more than 35 reviews

A new way to explore events: We’ve completely revamped the user interface making it easier for the user to know all about the events happening in the city.

Featured events: The featured section now has a new bookshelf layout. Using the left and right keys one can quickly get to know about the best events taking place in the city.

Improved search and display: We’ve improved our search and one can search for events using event name, artist or venue. The search results layout is now in a grid format and users can explore Events using filters location on top (by location and category of events) and left (by date) of the matrix.

A better Event details layout: The Events page is now easier to navigate with all details such as venue, contact details, photos and description on the left and tickets available on the right. A user can also look at past and upcoming events at the venue. This is followed by the venue location on a map, similar events nearby and nearby restaurant sections.

This is a big change - we are getting a lot of feedback (good and bad!) and we might be changing a few things in the future.

3) Mobile: Windows Phone native app

We recently launched the native app for the Windows mobile platform (Windows Phone OS). Windows Phone is a very promising product and is growing at a very fast pace. What differentiates the Windows app from apps on other platforms are its amazingly fast Metro UI and the Events guide which Zomato has launched on mobile for the first time. The application allows users to search and explore for nearby restaurants based on the user’s location and events happening in the city. In terms of downloads, we already have 10,000 downloads of our WP app since the launch. We believe that we have leveraged the amazingly fast and smooth UI offered by WP well and are looking forward to reach out to more and more WP users. Zomato on WP Features:

Discover: Shake your device and discover a nearby recommendation.

Explore: Gives you a list of restaurant recommendations based on your current location. You can also enter a location and get the list of recommendations.

Search: You can search for restaurants by the name, cuisine or location.

Reviews: Read and write reviews for restaurants.

Maps & Photos: Locate restaurants on the map and view actual pictures of the restaurant before getting there.

Events: Gives you all details for Events happening in the city during the week

#apps #events #guide #product #product-2 #updates #user-profile

What are you made of?

Back in 2005, fresh out of IIT, I started working on a foodie startup with some good friends. Our families and friends were the security blanket for us. And we worked tirelessly to make the startup work. It didn’t. I realized that we weren’t quite sure what we wanted to be as a firm, nor did we surround ourselves with the talent that could help us figure out a path to this uncertain destination. In 2008, when Pankaj and I gave the idea another shot, we focused on creating a product that we would want. Luckily, a few hundred thousand other people wanted it too. It worked. In some time, we started doing well with a 4 member team that included 2 interns. A year later, Pankaj and I quit our jobs to do this full time and we haven’t regretted a minute of it. We love what we do and that’s the reason why we can do it for 14 hours a day, 365 days a year. Along the way, we have been joined by over a 100 people who are as passionate about Zomato as we are. All of us here at Zomato, believe that the only way to grow this organization is by adding people who are better than us. We look for people who have the passion of Don Quixote with the mental strength to serve in the Indian Army. We look for people who can drive change. People who have a point to prove - to themselves rather than others. People who have never been part of the rat race. Or the ones who want to pull out of the race. Because that race is not anyways the one they want to win. Timeout. You are probably wondering why we need such people to run a ‘review website’. This needs explanation. Zomato was never started as a ‘review website’. It was a guide with information required to decide where to order food from. We spruced it up by having practically all menus in any given geographical area. Based on feedback, we brought in pictures, maps and other relevant information. We created some smart filters on the website to help people make their searches relevant. We went few steps ahead by splitting the search results by delivery and dine-out. More relevance. A large number of users gave us feedback to create a review section and we did that. The focus was always, and will always be, to create a food guide, not just a ‘review website’. In fact, we were the first brand in India to bring the power of food search to the mobile via our smartphones apps. While we were creating and improving our products, we naturally got advertisers on board. That is the simplest way in which an aggregator like us makes money. Restaurant clients however, came to us with a variety of issues and sought help. None of us belonged to the hospitality industry and were clearly not qualified to help them. But we more than made up for it with logic and common sense – something that we still look for while getting people on board. We analyzed food search behavior and had hordes of data to validate our recommendations. Here’s the long and short of it – sitting behind the curtain of a ‘review website’ are people who are problem solvers for the restaurant business. We offer a gamut of services which helps restaurants not only market themselves better, but also run their operations smoothly. We are business drivers. We charge a bomb for what we do – we value our intellect. This is clearly where we go much beyond any ‘review website’. We are not Zomato ‘dot com’, we are ‘Zomato’. Right now, Zomato is growing super fast and we need people who can grow faster than the organization. People who can figure out stuff by themselves and get things done. People who dream of running a company one day and want to get their hands dirty at running one right now. If you think this is what you are made of, you should be here at Zomato. Here, there is always something fun, meaningful and i-m-possible to do. We are three years old and we are building things which will change the face of our industry. If you want to be a part of the change, and drive it, write in your motivation to me at [email protected]; please do not send your CVs – we don’t look at them. Moreover, once you join Zomato, you will probably never need one again.

#ideas #innovation #product-2 #startup #tradecraft