Zomato brings its restaurant guide to Southeast Asia after launching in the Philippines

India-headquartered restaurant guide Zomato has continued its global rollout after it arrived in Southeast Asia through a launch in the Philippines.

Zomato is a food-themed listings site that includes details of restaurants for eat-in, take-away and delivery meals. It sees 10 million visitors per month — up from 9 million in January — and covers more 80,000 restaurants across 20 cities in six countries.

Its new ‘Metro Manila’ section initially features 9,000 restaurants spread across the cities of Quezon, Manila, Makati, Mandaluyong, Paranaque, Pasay, Pasig, Pateros, San Juan, and Taguig. Food and entertainment aficionados in these areas can access the section via the dedicate website, or the Zomato mobile apps for iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry.

Zomato is particular proud of the “strength” of the information it provides, which includes scans of menus, photos, addresses, maps and user reviews. Its apps include a location feature that finds restaurants that are within a user’s immediate locale.

Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal says the team enjoyed its two-week pre-launch period in Manila “enough to never want to leave” the country.

“It’s always great to be in a cosmopolitan city that loves to eat, and we hope to be an integral part of its dining culture for a long time to come,” he adds.

Zomato has been busy expanding its presence over the past six months. The Delhi-based company rolled into the Middle East (via Dubai) in September 2012 and went online in London in the UK in January. It’s also available in the Qatar and Sri Lanka.

The company has been talking about expanding to Southeast Asia for some time and it is planning further launches in the region. It also wants to hit new markets in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America in the near future.

Zomato is backed by $6.5 million in funding from Info Edge, a provider of online classifieds in India. Last September, it upped its stake in Zomato to 48.5 percent with a fresh investment of $2.3 million, as VC Circle reports, to help fuel the aggressive international expansion.

Originally founded in 2008 as Foodiebay, Zomato makes its money using hyper-local advertising. It has not provided details of its revenues or profits.

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