The other (real) problem with Zomato

The original article was published on Medium.

It has been another action packed week for Zomato. The restaurant discovery and food delivery start-up had a mark down of 50% on its previously raised valuation. With Twitter jabs both from Mahesh Murthy and Deepinder Goyal, the Indian Start-up community split in valuation-shaming and valuation-saving.

This post isn’t about the falling start-up valuations.

As a boot-strapped entrepreneur I am obsessed with any customer behaviour signs that I can use to improve our product experience. I am going to write today as a Zomato user and a fan. Zomato undoubtedly has an insane user engagement, like millions others I use it to order food and search for great places to eat. Even the engagement from the restaurants is impressive, one bad review and all the ego massages follow, in the consumer world this is as good as it gets.

But, there’s something wrong.

Zomato and I are having a hard time. We talk but don’t listen to each other anymore. We are not happy and here’s whats wrong..

Dude, where’s my curation?

For a product app so advanced I am surprised by how bad the curation is. Yes they have ‘local’ content, which is basically a static list for everyone, but why isn’t listing suggestions improved as I use the app. Suggestions for both Dunkin Donuts and Gung the Palace appear together (in foodie universe this is blasphemy). A lot of places that I regularly order food from don’t show in my local feed even though they deliver to me. Moreover it’s impossible to discover new and trendy places on the app. So the search and curation sucks.

I don’t trust a 4.5 anymore

I have been to several 4+ rated places via Zomato, in the last few months the experiences are deteriorating while the average ratings of new places are going up. After I write about my own experience being less than a 3, I am challenged by the Foodie Mafia aka the Super Foodies. Yes I understand this is a matter of taste and my rating might be different than someone else’s but I no longer trust a listing with 4.5 stars, this is the beginning of the trouble. This makes me wonder if it’s possible to buy reviews from the Super Foodies? I guess so, it would be hard to remain unbiased for people putting in so much into a building a follower base. Has Zomato’s biggest user asset become it’s biggest threat?

Can a content platform remain neutral when the revenue comes from ad sales?

Yes, one word; Google. In the case of Zomato, the line is far more blurred. There are traditional banner ads that Zomato deploys, I would be shocked if the click rates on these are high. Faced with the revenue pressure is it possible that Zomato is compromising the quality of the curation / search results? I guess that would explain the mysterious ‘Sort by Popularity’ filter, which is also the default sort mechanism.

For a business whose product is a content platform, the authenticity and true rating of the listings would be the holy grail. It would also be the driver of user engagement and without its neutrality the search would have no relevance. This to me is a bigger problem than a valuation discount, market cycles will come and go but the only thing that will remain strong is your product. When start-ups explode with growth it is vital they remain true to their product and balance business objectives with customer relevance.