Zomato's REAL Plan With District !!

0:00 Recently, I found a new feature in Zumato's District app. This feature called stores. And when you open this, you see a range of offline stores listed here. There's fashion, home decor, and even furniture stores. And this made me think, wasn't District supposed to be just a dining out and movie and event ticketing app? And what are they doing in offline shopping space? What's their plan with it? So, I dug a little deeper, went through a few articles and social media posts to try to understand Zumato's plan. Last year when the company announced this new app, they had said that district is part of their going out business and that it is for movies, events and dining out bookings. But this new feature of listing all kinds of offline stores tells a very different story. It shows that the company has even bigger plans. And this is the plan. People live in two worlds. One is the online world and one is offline. For the online world, the

0:45 company has Zumato, their main app where you can order food mainly. And then you have Blinket where you can buy most of your day-to-day stuff. The other world people live in is offline. They go to eat, watch movies, go shopping or do fun activities like go on a trip. And now District is going after this massive market, everything offline. So Zomato and Blinket for the online and district for the offline. And this in my opinion is the most ambitious venture of the Goyel. He wants to build a generational company something that outlasts him and is also one of the reasons why he renamed his parent company to eternal something that's both boundless and timeless. And so in this video, we'll try to uncover what is Zomato's real plan with District. What are they truly going after? Who are their competitors? And how big can this really get in the next decade? Also, how does it all tie

1:30 into Theindendra's mega vision of turning Zomato into a$100 billion company. And before we start, I want to mention that we are now part of Zerodha 01 network. Okay, so let's begin with a very basic question. Why would Zomato start a new business called district? See, this comes from Depender Goy's philosophy that none of the business models created today will last beyond a decade and that's because of fast-changing technology and distribution methods. Every day there are hundreds of new companies being built and as a result customer loyalty is going down and that's why it's very hard today to build a generational company compared to a few decades back. And so if you really want

2:16 to build a long-lasting company today, you have to keep iterating, keep learning and launching new businesses. And this is exactly what Depender is doing at Zumato. According to him, for Zumato, it's all about how do we disrupt our own businesses and that Zumato is already at version 4 in its 16 years of journey. The first version was pre205 when Zumato was just a restaurant discovery platform. The second version was it getting into food delivery. The third version then was Blinket and getting into quick commerce. And with District, Zumato which is now eternal is in its fourth version. The first three versions helped the company become a unicorn, go public and become a $30 billion business today. And with district, depend wants the company to get closer to his stated goal of making it a hundred billion company. So this is the reason why Zumato has launched a new business. But why district? Why start an

3:03 offline business when Zomato's strength is building online distributionled products? Let me tell you why. Imagine this is India's total retail market. So think of all the goods and services sold in the country. They come under this. In 2025, the size of India's retail market is around $1.4 trillion. Now 90% of this is still offline and only 10% of it is online. So all the major e-commerce companies like Flipkart and Amazon India and quickcommerce companies like Swiggy, Zomato and Zeppto fall under this. And although it's easy to make a business in this online retail segment, it's also very crowded and small. And that's why Depender Goyle is looking at this market, the offline retail. This is where the big opportunity lies. Its size is massive, but at the same time, there's a lot of room for innovation. No big player is using technology to really go after this offline market. And this

3:50 is the opportunity that District is going after. There's actually this term called O2O, online to offline, which you need to understand here. The idea is to find a user online and then pull them offline to sell a product or service. And this trend is now picking up around the world, especially after the covid pandemic. And it's easy to understand why, right? I mean on one hand our screen time is increasing but at the same time most of our important experiences are offline. It could be watching a movie in a theater, eating out or offline shopping and even taking a trip. And this trend is exactly what district is banking upon. Also this is not a brand new concept. Companies like Groupon have done it 15 years ago. What they did was that they offered online deals and discounts and then users redeemed these offers at offline places like salons, restaurants and movie theaters. District is just adding a few

4:35 important things to this model and presenting it in a brand new way. Firstly, it's amplifying the entire experience. I mean, it's just putting it all in one app. Earlier, this ecosystem was broken into many pieces. You first found a coupon on one website and then you went to a payment getaway to pay for it and finally you redeemed that coupon at an offline store. District is doing all of this in one single app. Secondly, District has a unique advantage of having millions of users through its two other apps and that gives it a very strong distribution. It can understand a user's profile unlike any other player in this category and this gives it the advantage of giving personalized deals to customers and District can actually sell this personalization advantage to businesses. So for example, let's say there's a new women fashion brand that has come up in an area. This brand goes to District and tells them, "Hey, we

5:21 need a thousand women aged 15 to 24 to visit our store in the next 1 week." and district then shows a listing of the store to the targeted customer base. According to a shop owner, I really like this concept. It's very easy for us to analyze how much business we get in a week and track our growth patterns. And this is a win-win for everyone. Businesses get the right customers in their stores and district earns a commission on every transaction. And this can actually get really big. District can act as a paid online distribution for all these businesses. So we understand that District is a great business choice. But now the question is how will Zomato win in this space? There are four segments as of now that District is operating in or plans to operate in. These are dining out, movie and event booking, offline shopping and the fourth which they

6:07 haven't entered yet but they soon will is travel and holiday booking. And let's talk about them one by one. The dining out business is probably the easiest segment for District. Its parent company Zomato has been doing it since 2016 and it is already one of the top three players in this segment along with Easy Diner and Swiggies Dine Out. Also, now that district will offer all these other services as well, it is going to attract a new set of users. People who had earlier not use Zumato for dining out. See, District can now sell bundle deals to people. For example, if someone is going to watch a movie, it can give them a great offer for a restaurant nearby and this can convert a lot of new customers. This entire segment of dining out is growing very fast. According to a research, Indians currently eat out five times on average in a month and this number is close to 30 in countries like US and China. So, District is in a great

6:53 position to win a big chunk of this market. The next part of District is movie and event ticket booking. For this, Zumato had acquired PTM's movie and event booking business to get a head start in this space. It did spend around 2,000 cr rupees to acquire it, but it saved the company a lot of time to build it from scratch. Also, they took the entire team of PTM which was working on this product. Also, this movie and event booking business is a little tricky because it has an established market player book my show with almost 75% market share. And this will be an interesting battle. On one hand, there is district whose parent company eternal is a $30 billion behemoth and on the other side there is book my show with a solid founder Ashish Shim Rajani. I mean having 75% market share in a segment like this should tell you how good the company is. Here district's main strategy would be to throw money. They

7:39 have loads and loads of cash which they can use for marketing and getting exclusive rights to certain events and concerts. Last year for example, bookm had really screwed up with the entire cold play event and against this district successfully organized dualipas concert. So all they need is two three such events every year to stay ahead of book my show. Another advantage district has is it being an everything app. So even if a user is coming for let's say dining out, they will see the entertainment booking section right there and possibly book through it the next time. I personally open the district app two to three times in a day just to see what's going on. On the other hand, I don't remember the last time I'd opened the book my shows app. The third segment District has now started is offline shopping. And this one is a little harder to analyze because no one is really doing it in the same way. Yes, there are players like

8:25 Magic Pin who give deals and discounts on offline stores. But there is no way to know how much of their business comes from these shopping stores. Also, if you really think these offline stores do need help, they are forced to sell online because that's where the growth is happening. But because of selling online, their margins are dropping. There is this line from Ashnid I really like that unless a customer is not walking up to your store and buying your product, you don't have a brand and district is helping these stores to get offline customers. Currently, it's using heavy discounts as an incentive to pull customers and it's a strong pull factor especially for Indian customers. According to a Neils and IQ report from 2021, 81% of Indian shoppers were actively looking for discounts and promotions in stores. So, if you knew that District offers these great discounts, next time you're out, you'll take out your phone to check if there is

9:10 any offer. I would love to see 2 three quarters down the line on how district's revenue rises because this segment is where the most of the growth will come from. The last segment which district plans to get into is station. Now, there's not enough info out there about this because the company hasn't released this feature in their app. They've just talked about it in couple of press releases. So, I don't know if they'll just sell holiday packages by partnering up with different hotel chains or organize events and tours, but one thing is for sure, this is a heavily competitive market. District has to compete with the likes of Make My Trip and Thrillophilia, companies that are doing this for decades. So, will discounts be enough for District to gain a market share in this segment, or will it offer something unique? That remains to be seen. In the end, I want to ask you, what do you think of Zomato's new business, District? Have you already

9:56 used it for something? And how was your experience? Also, what do you think is the competitive advantage of Zumato that will allow it to win in this market? Let me know in the comments.