Zomato Acquires Turkey’s Mekanist, 7th Acquisition In 6 Months

Zomato’s acquisition spree is not over yet – They have today announced acquisition of Turkey’s leading restaurant discovery and review service, Mekanist for undisclosed sum.

This is Zomato’s seventh acquisition in just over 6 months – this sure must be some sort of a record in terms of number of acquisitions done by a company in such a small time period. Just couple of weeks back, they made their biggest acquisition of Urbanspoon, acquiring them for around $53 million.

In month of November 2014 they acquired popular Italian search service Cibando. Prior to that, within a gap of 4 months they had acquired MenuMania in New Zealand,Lunchtime in Czech Republic, Obedovat in Slovakia, and Gastronauci in Poland.

Zomato had already launched their services in Turkey in November 2013, however, after Mekanist acquisition they will be the largest restaurant discovery and review service with coverage of over 75,000 restaurants  driving over 3 million visitors a month. Zomato currently has a team of 27 people in Turkey, most of whom are based out of the local headquarters in Istanbul.

According to press release sent to us, all of Mekanist’s traffic and restaurant-related content will move to Zomato, and Mekanist app users will be able to see all restaurant listings within Zomato app. For restaurant owners, they will now be able to benefit from Zomato’s hyperlocal advertising model, and target customers searching for restaurants in and around their location.

Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato, said, “Mekanist has established itself as one of the heavyweights in the online restaurant search and discovery space in Turkey. We’re excited to be joining forces with them as we continue to grow in one of our most important markets. Mekanist is one of the first and most successful tech startups to emerge from the Turkish startup ecosystem, and we’re excited about them becoming a part of Zomato.”

Zomato’s growth by way of acquisitions in last few months has been quite staggering. The had raised $60 million funding at valuation of $660 million in month of November 2014. However, with acquisition of UrbanSpoon and Mekanist, their valuation must surely touched a billion dollars if not more!