Not the best balance sheet year for Zomato

Restaurant discovery and listing platform Zomato Media Pvt Ltd plunges its way into the red zone with Rs 492.27 crore in losses as of 31^st March 2016. The news broke after a regulatory filing by its investor Info Edge (India) Ltd (holds a stake of 50.1%).

Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder and executive vice-chairman of Info Edge, said in an interview on 9 May said that “Zomato’s revenue had more than doubled in the last nine months and continues to head north at a good clip”. Zomato’s revenue shot up by 91.2% to Rs.184.96 crore from Rs.96.73 crore but at the cost of Rs 492.27 in losses from Rs 136 crore in 2014-2015.

Till date Zomato has risen close to $255 million from Edge, Sequoia Capital, Vy Capital and Temasek Holdings and became one of the few unicorns, or privately held firms valued at least $1 billion. This month they lost this prestigious tag of “Unicorn” after analysts at HSBC Securities and Capital Markets (India) Pvt. Ltd valued the firm at about $500 million.

Earlier Deeperder Goyal, Zomato CEO also wrote a blog on why they are still a unicorn.

Food tech companies in India are suffering due to the slowdown in funding, with some closing or getting acquired. Recently TinyOwl closed operations all over the country except in Mumbai, to prepare its merge with hyperlocal delvery startup Roadrunnr. Zomato itself shut operations in four cities last year (Lucknow, Kochi, Indore and Coimbatore) and fired about 300 people in October.