XAVIER INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT BHUBANESWAR
Marketing Management Project on
Zomato Submitted to: Prof. M N Tripathi Associate Professor, Marketing, XIMB
Submitted by : Group 5
Divya Narula (uh13017 ) Indu B (uh13020) Karan Shorey (uh13024)
Aditya Nair (uh13019) K Shajna (uh13022) Swarnabh (uh13054) PGDM-HRM-I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to express a whole-hearted gratitude to all those who have helped with the report or have been associated with the report in any which way and made it a worth-while experience. We sincerely thank Prof. M N Tripathi, who we cannot thank enough for having given us the opportunity and his total support for working on such a project. We are greatly indebted to our batch mates for having shared their invaluable contacts with us which went a long way in the successful completion of our report. And, a special mention of Mr. Rahul Fatnani, manager (sales and marketing) at Zomato for his inputs on the various recruitment methods adopted at Zomato. Thank you. Group-5
TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary ........................................................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. Introduction to the company ......................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Questions to be answered ............................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined. Q1 ............................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Q2 ............................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Conclusion ...................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Bibliography ................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Zomato is an online restaurant discovery guide providing information on home delivery, dine-out, cafés and nightlife in cities of India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. Zomato's restaurant guide allows users to search for information related to restaurants, bars, pubs and clubs. The information displayed usually consists of the establishment's name, its contact numbers, address, menu, photos, reviews, location on map as well as any events occurring at the establishment. This report was commissioned to examine the marketing policies and practices followed at Zomato in order to attract and retain talent in the company. Zomato adopted the strategy of recruiting employees from online portals, referrals, internships and campus recruitments. They believe in incentivizing their employees to tap into their networks. Their work culture challenging, flexible and youth oriented. Technology has a great role to play in their system. Zomato creates brand recognition through promotion and advertisement and also through its impactful logo design. It delegates responsibilities to individuals and puts system to place to obtain marketing feedback which is the basis for measurement of success against short term targets which in turn leads to fulfilment of long term goals of the or ganization.
INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPANY
QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED Q1) How a company markets itself to its future recruits? What are the marketing concepts used? Marketing for Recruitment The question that was posed was to identify the ways in which Zomato markets itself to future recruits. The relevant literature was available in the Zomato’s site and newspaper articles, its social media presence in facebook and twitter and the official blogs that are maintained by Zomato. A few of its employees were also consulted to understand the marketing strategy. When we consider marketing of a job to its future recruits, the product that Zomato offers to the consumers(employees) is the job, with the salary and the associated perks .The price is what the employees pay in return, that is their time, energy and talent. In promotion, the channels through which the job is being marketed were identified. Zomato has branded themselves amongst the potential recruits by portraying their youth friendly work culture. The following description in their official website tells what their wor kplace offers. Our workplaces are made up of open spaces and flexible structures. You have unlimited access to caffeine, fresh air, and everyone in the organization. You will love your colleagues, and you will love the work. Our people tell us that the biggest benefits of working at Zomato are the work they do and the people they work with. Apart from that, Zomato makes offers the following work culture:
Competitive salary and equity packages
Time away as you need it
Unlimited supply of food, coffee and internet at all our o ffices
Office parties every month
In-house gym (at our Delhi HQ)
In-house chef for lunch and dinner, everyday (at our Delhi HQ)
The amenities provided at Zomato are primarily for t he youth who are tech savvy as well. The next marketing strategy is the challenging job they provide and the correct people to work with. “We have been able to put together a great team which never says die, parties hard and works harder. I remember a client asking me a few days ago “Can I have one of your soldiers?” was the statement Mr. Sourabh Sengupta made about the work c ulture at Zomato. We found out that the four major channels through which Zomato connects with its future employees are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and the blogs. The key rules they use while marketing the jobs are as below:
1. Your users are the best people to put this question to. Be shameless in telling people who like your product and use it often that you are hiring. We almost always have a prominent hiring message on the website and have a steady stream of applications coming in every day. Previously, they just didn’t know it was an option for them. Also, use your social media strength to spread the word that you are hiring. 2. The first question you need to answer before you fire up LinkedIn is what kind of candidate fits the bill? – What kind of profiles, firms, experience, education, and locations are you targeting? Now that you have what you need, start identifying similar profiles and then reach out to every single one. Send a message to connect, keep it cordial, direct, and give a quick overview of what your company does. When people get back to you, talk to them right away – memory based on LinkedIn messages is often short-lived. 3. Be passive aggressive with networking. Incentivize your employees to tap into their networks. Then their friends’ networks and their friends’ network…well, you get the picture. 4. We have been able to put together a great team which never says die, parties hard and works harder. I remember a client asking me a few days ago “Can I have one of your soldiers?” 5. Every Zoman is a brand ambassador. This is why we kept the PR in house. He explains: “ We wanted to do our marketing efforts internally because we personally wanted to build relationships with the media over time. If you change from one agency to another, you lose that contact. It’s about taking a friendly approach when it comes to PR. It was definitely cheaper to do it ourselves as well.” So in short, Zomato is a company that uses their employees to reach out to potential employees through referrals and other social and professional networks. An interesting observation on the Zomato site was the listing of a lot of its employees with a final slot open to the next potential recruit.
Additionally, the work culture at Zomato is highly competitive with:
Being surrounded by some of the smartest people.
Not being ahead of times leading to being out job.
Everyone made to work in all domains and sometimes even very basic jobs
Extremely high focus needed to complete the tasks.
According to Mr. Deepinder Goyal, some of the principles he follows to recruit and retain employees is to:
Hire good people.
Paying people well so that they are able to focus on their job well.
Being nice and fair to people.
The Internship Route Internship is one of the strong ways of recruiting talent and Zomato continuously asks freshers to intern with them and if found fit, they are inducted into the company. The “ZOMATO Trial Week For 2014 Batch Freshers” was opened to a particular section of freshers .They were given the job for a week which gave them ample opportunity to demonstrate their technical and marketing skills. The people whom Zomato found as the right fit were eventually hired. Such forms of recruiting people tell that Zomato considers hiring a serious business and is concerned about every hire they make.
Q2)
What
are
the
regular
Knowledge
Skills
and
Abilities
looked
at
by
HRs
of
this company for recruiting people in the marketing department? Ans 2: Various competencies and KSAs that are required in the marketing employees at Zomato are:
Familiarity with the geography of the location applied to.
Excellent oral and written communication skills.
Knowledge of how to operate a laptop / PC, good typing speed and working knowledge of Microsoft Office.
Innovative, enthusiastic and self-motivated individuals.
Comfortable with new challenges, long and unpredictable work hours.
Proven track record of achieving revenue targets. Allocation of targets and formulating incentive plans to the team would be a bonus.
Very high ethical standards.
Various marketing roles that are defined in the company are as follows: 1. Business Development Associate 2. Sales Head 3. Key Accounts Manager 4. Sales Manager 5. Area Sales Manager
Business Development Associate
Responsibilities:
Help restaurants market themselves better by selling advertising space to them on Zomato.
Effectively search prospective clients and generate sales leads. Leads could range from takeaway joints to 5 Star properties.
Advise clients on relevant and impactful marketing communication to be displayed on their advertising space on Zomato. Amplify the impact of marketing campaigns by distributing Zomato’s marketing merchandize to restaurants for display.
Prepare result reports for advertising campaigns and interpret them for clients. Also suggest measures to improve the effectiveness of the marketing campaign.
Manage end-to-end client relationship including pitching, negotiation, contracting, billing / invoicing, payment collection, graphic design support (with the help of the Graphics Team), campaign activations, result tracking and troubleshooting.
Requirements
0 – 2 years of work experience. Relevant experience in sales is a bonus!
Familiarity with the geography of the location applied to.
Excellent oral and written communication skills in Portuguese and English.
Knowledge of how to operate a laptop / PC, good typing speed and working knowledge of Microsoft Office.
Innovative, enthusiastic and self-motivated individuals.
Very high ethical standards.
Comfortable with new challenges, long and unpredictable work hours.
Sales Head
Responsibilities:
Sustaining and growing the city's revenue by new client acquisitions, renewing clients and identifying new business development opportunities in the city
Managing the team to handle end-to-end client relationships including pitching, negotiation, contracting, billing / invoicing, payment collection and troubleshooting.
Ensure complete Product and Sales training of new sales joinees.
Formulating targets and incentive plans for the sales team in line with the city operating plans.
Hiring and retaining sales employees.
Managing the career of each team member and grooming them to be sales superstars.
Networking in the merchant's community and representing the company at various B2B events.
Requirements
5+ years of relevant Work Experience in sales.
Prior team management experience is a must.
Proven track record of achieving revenue targets. Allocation of targets and formulating incentive plans to the team would be a bonus!
Familiarity with the geography of the location applied to.
Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
Very high ethical standards.
Comfortable with ambiguity and unpredictable work hours.
An MBA is not mandatory
Key Accounts Manager
Responsibilities:
Help restaurants market themselves better by selling advertising space to them on Zomato.
Effectively search prospective clients and generate sales leads. Leads could range from takeaway joints to 5 Star properties.
Advise clients on relevant and impactful marketing communication to be displayed on their advertising space on Zomato. Amplify the impact of marketing campaigns by distributing Zomato’s marketing merchandize to restaurants for display.
Prepare result reports for advertising campaigns and interpret them for clients. Also suggest measures to improve the effectiveness of the marketing campaign.
Manage end-to-end client relationship including pitching, negotiation, contracting, billing / invoicing, payment collection, graphic design support (with the help of the Graphics Team), campaign activations, result tracking and troubleshooting.
Requirements
1.5 - 3 years of Work Experience. Relevant experience in sales is a bonus!
Familiarity with the geography of the location applied to.
Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
Knowledge of how to operate a laptop / PC, good typing speed and working knowledge of Microsoft Office.
Intelligent, enthusiastic and self-motivated individuals.
Should be comfortable working in large multi-cultural teams.
Very high ethical standards.
Comfortable with ambiguity and unpredictable work hours.
Proven track record of meeting revenue targets.
Prior leadership experience is a bonus!
An MBA is not mandatory.
Sales Manager
Responsibilities:
Help restaurants market themselves better by selling advertising space to them on Zomato.
Effectively search prospective clients and generate sales leads. Leads could range from takeaway joints to 5 Star properties.
Advise clients on relevant and impactful marketing communication to be displayed on their advertising space on Zomato. Amplify the impact of marketing campaigns by distributing Zomato’s marketing merchandize to restaurants for display.
Prepare result reports for advertising campaigns and interpret them for clients. Also suggest measures to improve the effectiveness of the marketing campaign.
Manage end-to-end client relationship including pitching, negotiation, contracting, billing / invoicing, payment collection, graphic design support (with the help of the Graphics Team), campaign activations, result tracking and troubleshooting.
Requirements
0 – 1.5 years of work experience. Relevant experience in sales is a bonus!
Familiarity with the geography of the location applied to.
Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
Knowledge of how to operate a laptop / PC, good typing speed and working knowledge of Microsoft Office.
Intelligent, enthusiastic and self-motivated individuals.
Should be comfortable working in large multi-cultural teams.
Very high ethical standards.
Comfortable with ambiguity and unpredictable work hours.
Area Sales Manager
Responsibilities:
Ensure and maintain the financial health of the area.
Managing the team to handle end-to-end client relationships including pitching, negotiation, contracting, billing / invoicing, payment collection and troubleshooting.
Allocating leads, tracking and monitoring the work of each team member along with ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of their work .
Maintaining Area Reports which include revenue numbers, payment collections and evaluation of team performance and reporting the same to the Sales / Business Head of the city.
Allocating targets and calculating incentives for the sales team .
Hiring and retaining sales employees for the area.
Acquiring and managing critical client accounts which have higher degree of complexity in terms of client servicing.
Requirements
3 - 5 years of relevant Work Experience.
Prior team management experience is a must.
Proven track record of achieving revenue targets. Allocation of targets and formulating incentive plans to the team would be a bonus!
Familiarity with the geography of the location applied to.
Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
Very high ethical standards.
Comfortable with ambiguity and unpredictable work hours.
An MBA is not mandatory.
Besides employees’ passion for the company, Zomato management looks for qualities like ethics, respect, attitude and skills – in that order as explained below. Ethics There has to be a zero compromise on ethics. If a Sales person tells us that he had a meeting with a client while he was chilling at home, it is not acceptable. If an employee makes a mistake and tells us that it wasn’t him, it is not acceptable. Honesty and hard work are the basics which bond a start-up team together – there is no space for such demeanour. The worst part is that if you warn people at such
things, they almost always never learn. They would do the same thing after a few months. The only thing that makes people learn and imbibe these things are repercussions. Repercussions teach them that the potential long-term downside of failing at ethics is always bigger than the short-term upside. Failing at ethics leads to instant firings. No questions asked.
Respect Every last person in your organization deserves the same amount of respect as the first. If an employee disrespects someone, even for a valid reason, he/she contributes to a negative vibe in the office which makes it difficult for work to happen. It is vital to maintain a positive and pleasant working environment in a start-up. This is where it gets subjective. But your instinct will tell you whether what you are about to do is right or wrong. E.g. if a male employee calls his female colleague a bitch (and other things) in front of 10 other people for some stupid reason, you know what to do.
Attitude Everybody needs to sport a “can-do” attitude and believe that nothing is below his/her dignity. The proverbial “bringing coffee for the team” is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about even simpler things like taking packaging paper and wrapping 1000 copies of a book with gift paper overnight. If someone says that this is not his/her job description, it’s a problem. Every last fucking thing in a start up is everybody’s job description. In such cases, someone needs to sit with the person and explain to him/her that they need to pull up their socks. Still, if this person acts pricey one more time (make sure you put him on a test soon enough), you have a problem which you need to fix.
Skills This is where people are not able to do their job well. This is ok, as long as they are trying, as long as they are asking for help. This is where people are given enough time to learn and do a better job – of course, only if they are doing well on Levels 1, 2 & 3. They are not asked to leave as long as they are putting in their best effort. If possible, try to find some other role for them where they can possibly contribute more. Over time, however, if things don’t start working out, it becomes counterproductive for the person to stay at the company. It is then mutually decided that the person needs to find somewhere else where he/she would fit and perform better.
The leaders say that “ Our Call for Leaders focuses on getting in touch with people who have founded and led their own ventures in the past. It’s simple – entrepreneurs develop a unique skill set, which
makes them solution oriented, focused decision makers, and highly adaptable . We’ve hired entrepreneurs in the past, and it’s worked very well for us. They’ve experienced ups and downs, and
they understand what it takes to overcome challenges. They rarely complain about stuff, and are always in the state of fixing things which are broken ”
CONCLUSION Zomato has its own innovative style of marketing itself to the future recruits. They have positioned their workplace as youth and technology centred in such a way that Zomato is associated with tech savvy young people who likes flexible yet challenging style of working. The main competitors of Zomato, i.e., Burpp.com and just-eat.in do not employ as much of online marketing as Zomato does. For a company that started in 2008, Zomato has come a long way through its online marketing and by recruiting the right fit for the organization. The single biggest thing that Zomato looks for in a recruit is passion to do work rather interest in making money. This is perhaps their success mantra that has achieved them attain great heights. Making every ‘zoman’ a brand ambassador is indeed a great achievement when a lot of companies are grappling with the issues of attrition. Zomato’s revenue model is hugely based on advertising (about 95%) and it generated 11.37 Crores in FY13. The sustainability of their business model will heavily depend on the way they adapt the applications they develop to the needs of the market. The creativity that they bring in to the products they develop will depend heavily on the people they hire. As long as Zomato hires t he right people in the senior management as well as at the junior level, they will be able to work up to their vision.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. http://www.zomato.com/india 2. http://business-fundas.com/2012/7-ps-of-services-marketing-framework-limitations/ 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zomato 4. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-01-16/news/46264356_1_zomatodeepinder-goyal-colleges 5. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/timeline-with-milestones-TC102930035.aspx 6. http://media2.intoday.in/btmt/images/stories//November2013/zomato-growthplans1_650_111813045504.jpg 7. http://www.mymajors.com/skills-and-knowledge/marketing-managers 8. http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/media/p/6/005/047/0c0/0fa8992.png 9. http://www.zomato.com/blog/getting-the-hiring-advantage 10. http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/11593265 11. http://www.jobstreet.co.id/jobs/2013/8/default/60/1398742.htm?fr=R 12. http://workinstartups.com/job-board/job/10997/office-manager-zomato-at-zomato/
