Zomato buys Turkey's popular restaurant discovery service Mekanist

Global restaurant discovery service Zomato announced today that it has acquired Mekanist.net, one of the leading players in Turkey backed by Pond Ventures, in an all cash deal. This is Zomato's last big acquisition in Eastern Europe where it has last added most popular restaurant search services in Czech Republic and Slovakia in August last year.

Other terms of the deal were undisclosed but our resources tell us that Ali Servet Eyüboğlu, Co-founder and CEO of Mekanist will be the Country Manager of Zomato Turkey which currently has a team of 27 people in Turkey, most of whom are based out of the local headquarters in Istanbul. Oytun Çalapöver, who is currently the Country Manager of Zomato will be responsible from international expansion at Zomato's headquarter in New Delhi.

Zomato says that the two teams will be working together  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.

With the acquisition of Mekanist, Zomato restaurant coverage will increase from about 27,500 restaurants in Istanbul and Ankara to more than 50,000 restaurants across Turkey, serving over 3 million times a month. Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato, says, “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.”

This is Zomato's seventh acquisition in the past six months, the company has 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.

Ali Servet Eyüboğlu, Co-founder and CEO of Mekanist, says, “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.”