Zomato acquires US-based table reservations platform NexTable

Restaurant search application Zomato has acquired US-based online table reservation platform based NexTable for an undisclosed sum. This is the ninth acquisitions by Zomato in the past nine months.

Following the acquisition, NexTable will soon be renamed to Zomato Book. The buy comes on the heels of Zomato's acquisition of cloud-based restaurant POS product MaplePOS.

With the acquisition of both NexTable and MaplePOS, Zomato will now further its reach into restaurants, and add even more value to its existing offering, the company said in a statement.

''We want to own the communication layer between restaurant businesses and customers. NexTable will add to this layer by bringing in the convenience of easy, online reservations for thousands of restaurants to our millions of users. NexTable will be a great addition to our existing product, and will add immense value to our efforts to make dining experiences even more enjoyable,'' said Pankaj Chaddah, Co-Founder and COO, Zomato said.

NexTable enables customers to make restaurant reservations online in real time and includes table management and marketing tools for restaurants. The acquisitions also follow Zomato's recent announcement of its foray into the online ordering industry.

Zomato has been focusing on creating a seamless in-application experience for customers and has been working on moving beyond just restaurant search and discovery, into table reservations, online ordering, and in-app cashless payments.

Adding NexTable and MaplePOS into its fold will now enable Zomato to offer point of sales solutions, table management and reservation system services to restaurant businesses. It already allows restaurant businesses to update their menus, deals and discounts on a real-time basis on Zomato.

''For any new table reservations product, no matter how good it is, it's very hard to get businesses to adopt the product at scale for two reasons. First, it is hard to scale a sales team without massive funding. Secondly, it is hard to sell the product if you don't have a significant consumer presence. Zomato solves both these issues for us, and we are excited to partner with them to realise the true potential of what we have built,'' said T.C. DeSilva, Founder and CEO of Nextable.

The NexTable deal makes for a total of nine acquisitions in the past nine months for Zomato. The largest of these was the acquisition of Urbanspoon, which Zomato acquired for $52M and marked its entry into the US, Australia and Canada.

Zomato also recently acquired dominant local restaurant search players in New Zealand, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Turkey, and Italy.