Zomato to launch 'District' app for out-of-home services

New Delhi: Food delivery aggregator Zomato is launching "District,” a new platform to consolidate going-out services such as dining, movies, sports ticketing, live performances, shopping, and staycations, CEO Deepinder Goyal said on Thursday.

In a letter to shareholders post the company's first quarter financial results, Goyal shared that he sees "District" emerging as the third large B2C business out of Zomato.

"We believe that there is an opportunity to further expand our going-out offering, building on top of our dining-out business," Goyal informed.

He observed that today, Zomato and Blinkit are our two large consumer businesses and both of them serve customers' needs at home.

"However, we also have one of India's largest 'going-out' businesses. Our dining-out business which helps our customers discover restaurants when they want to go out and dine at restaurants," the Zomato CEO said.

This dining-out business is now operating at a run-rate of USD 500 million plus annualised GOV (gross order value) and is already profitable, Goyal stated.

Elaborating further, he said, additional use cases for customers in the going out space include movies, sports ticketing, live performances, shopping, staycations etc., some of which we have already launched, or are building as we speak.

"Building a one-stop destination app for going-out could be a game changer for each of these use cases, and we intend to do exactly that with our new District (by Zomato) app. If we execute this well, we see going-out becoming the 3rd large B2C business emerging out of Zomato," Goyal said.