Zomato acquires Turkey\'s popular restaurant search service Mekanist

With the acquisition of Turkey-based restaurant discovery and review website Mekanist, Zomato will become the popular choice for anyone searching for places to dine out or order in from, across various cities in Turkey.

Zomato's restaurant coverage will increase from about 27,500 restaurants in Istanbul and Ankara to more than 50,000 restaurants across Turkey.

Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato, said, "Mekanist has established itself as one of the heavyweights in the online restaurant search and discovery space in Turkey. We're excited to be joining forces with them as we continue to grow in one of our most important markets. Mekanist is one of the first and most successful tech startups to emerge from the Turkish startup ecosystem, and we're excited about them becoming a part of Zomato."

The two teams will be working closely over the coming months to integrate Mekanist into Zomato. All of Mekanist's traffic and restaurant-related content will move to Zomato, and Mekanist app users will be able to use the Zomato app. The acquisition also has a lot to offer to restaurant businesses. They will now be able to benefit from Zomato's hyperlocal advertising model, and target customers searching for restaurants in and around their location. The Zomato for Business app suite will also help restaurant businesses connect and engage with customers like never before.

Ali Servet Eyuboglu, Co-founder and CEO of Mekanist, said, "We are proud that the initiative which we started eight years ago during university years has been acquired by a leading global player. With the power of Zomato, we will now be able to offer diners in Turkey an even wider range of restaurants to choose from. Users can access the rich, exhaustive information and reviews to easily decide where to eat or order from. We also believe that this is a big win for restaurant owners, as they will benefit hugely from Zomato's business-focused features."

Founded in 2008 with the purpose of offering users an opportunity to discover and enjoy local establishments in their cities, Mekanist also gives establishments a platform to effectively promote themselves to a targeted audience and opens a means of dialogue with existing and potential customers. Mekanist has over 190,000 listed establishments along with over 500,000 reviews from its 1.5 million strong signed-up user base on web and mobile.

This is Zomato's seventh acquisition in the past six months, having acquired Urbanspoon for $52m to enter the US and Australia markets only a couple of weeks ago. Zomato has also recently acquired local dominant restaurant search players in New Zealand, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Italy.

The integrated product will be rolled out over the next few months, and will be available to users and business owners in both Turkish and English. After the integration, Zomato will cover over 75,000 restaurants in Turkey, serving users over 3 million times a month.

Zomato currently has a team of 27 people in Turkey, most of whom are based out of the local headquarters in Istanbul.