Online restaurant guide Zomato today said it has forayed into the South African market as part of its expansion plans by launching its Johannesburg section that covers over 2,000 restaurants in the city.

“Zomato.com provides in-depth information on over 2,000 restaurants in Johannesburg,” the company said in a statement.

Commenting on the development, Zomato Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said: “We’ve been growing aggressively over the past few months, and South Africa was always on our minds. “We’ll also be launching in Cape Town soon, and look forward to South Africa becoming a key business hub for us,” he added.

Zomato was founded in July 2008 and since then it has expanded its services to 21 cities in 7 countries.

The company had earlier said in January that it would be investing $2 million (around Rs 11 crore) to expand its operations in the country and overseas.

On funding of the expansion plans, Goyal had said: “It will be done through internal accruals. We already have a significant chunk of funds left from our last round of funding of $2.5 million.”

Headquartered in New Delhi, Zomato forayed into international markets by entering the Middle East market in 2012, and has quickly expanded to UAE, UK, Qatar, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, the company said.

The company provides information such as scanned menus, mapped coordinates, pictures, ratings, contact details and user reviews for over 94,000 restaurants across its locations, Zomato said.

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