Popular food review website Zomato has officially left the Australian market.
Earlier this week, a few eagle-eyed fans noticed that the website no longer contains any ratings for cafes and restaurants anywhere in Australia.
Instead, a message appears which bids farewell to the land Down Under, saying: “It’s time to say goodbye.”
Zomato now only services India – where it was founded – and the United Arab Emirates.
The removal of Australian reviews had been a long-time coming, as Zomato announced it was withdrawing from the country way back in October 2020 amid Covid-19 pandemic woes.
However, the website remained live and Australians could still look up reviews.
Since then, Zomato pulled out of most of its global markets including in New Zealand, Portugal, UK, US, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Qatar, Ireland and Lebanon.
Deepinder Goyal and Mohit Gupta originally launched the review platform in their home town of New Delhi in 2008.
Initially, their technology was purely to order food and then get it delivered, but it expanded to cater for people wanting to look up restaurant and cafe reviews and other information.
In 2015, Zomato made a splash in the Australian market when the company snapped up review website Urbanspoon for $US60 million (at the time worth $A82 million).
Urbanspoon was quietly dissolved and its traffic rerouted to Zomato.
In 2020, after announcing the news of leaving the Australian market, a Zomato spokesperson explained the decision.
“We have decided to shut our local operations in these markets,” they said.
“While we are grateful for all the love we have garnered from our users, restaurant community, and all other partners, we are realigning our market strategy as per our long-term vision. We will continue to manage the platform remotely from India and are making every effort to support our teams.”
Some Australians have lamented the loss of Zomato on our shores, with one person taking to social media on Tuesday night to say: “Sad times. I used to use this app all the time to browse menus and check out photos of meals.
“I know I can get the same info from Google but I found the Zomato database to be more comprehensive and the food reviews a bit more accurate.”
Another commented: “Anyone else annoyed at the abrupt departure of Zomato in Australia? Not a patch on Urbanspoon … but I have found it useful nonetheless.”
Zomato has been having a rough time lately.
On Tuesday, the tech company pulled out of 225 cities across India after reportedly racking up significant losses.
It came just days after Zomato released its third-quarter financial earnings report, where it revealed its losses had widened further, India Today reports.
On top of that, Zomato co-founder Mohit Gupta also caused controversy by stepping down.
In November last year, Zomato also laid off around 3 per cent of its workforce in a cost-cutting measure.
In May 2020, Zomato sacked around 520 employees, which at the time accounted for 13 per cent of its workforce.
Zomato now offers reviews in only India and the UAE. It provides dining and delivery services in India but only a dining experience in the UAE.
The company’s current CEO, Deepinder Goyal, did not acknowledge any of the latest controversies and instead posted a positive message on Twitter, insisting the company was still performing highly.
It comes just three months since UK delivery giant Deliveroo also made the decision to pull out of the Australian market.