Expanding Zomato acquires Turkey’s Mekanist in all-cash deal

Popular restaurant search service Zomato on Thursday announced that it has acquired Turkish restaurant discovery portal Mekanist in an all-cash deal.

The move comes some two weeks after its entry in the US with a $52-million acquisition of Urbanspoon.

The company declined to comment on the value of this transaction.

The seven-year-old Zomato has so far raised $113 million, including a $60-million round last November.

It plans to cover 75,000 restaurants across Turkey, up from the current 27,500 it has in Istanbul and Ankara at present.

The two teams will work closely over coming months to integrate Mekanist into Zomato even as all of Mekanist's traffic and restaurant-related content gets transferred.

Besides, users of the Mekanist app will be able to use the Zomato app. Zomato will also treble its existing 27-member team in Turkey this year.

Zomato co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal told FE that the company will not enter new markets in the next 6-12 months and instead focus on monetising markets like Canada and Australia, among others.

The company will also concentrate on product innovation and introduce ancillary services like table bookings and cashless payments.

Zomato has been on an expansion spree since last year, having announced five acquisitions in Italy, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland last year.