Zomato might’ve started off as a company that hosted restaurant menus online, but it sure has come a long way.
Zomato has said it’s installed 650 on-ground weather stations to have access to precise and real-time weather information to make business decisions. The network of these 650 weather stations has been dubbed ‘Weather Union’, and Zomato says it’s the largest private infrastructure of its kind in India. Zomato says it’ll share data collected by its weather stations to other institutions and businesses through a free API.
“Excited to unveil India’s first crowd-supported weather infrastructure, Weather Union,” Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal posted on X. “These weather stations, developed by Zomato, provide localised, real-time information on key weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall etc. Currently available across 45 large cities, we are expanding this in other Indian cities very soon,” he added.
Zomato needs real-time weather information for its deliveries across the country. If it’s raining in a particular area, Zomato warns customers in advance about a potential delay in their orders. It also charges surge delivery fares in the event of rains or inclement weather. To be able to make these decisions, Zomato needed granular and real-time weather information, but it discovered that this data wasn’t available. “Hence, we took it upon ourselves to develop a solution capable of empowering us on this front,” Goyal said.
Zomato says now that it has developed the infrastructure, it’s giving away this data through an API for free to institutions and companies. “We believe that this data is too valuable to keep to ourselves or to monetise; therefore, as a Zomato Giveback, we are opening up access to this data to everyone for public good. Multiple companies and public institutions should use real-time weather data, to boost the productivity of our economy. This rich data holds significant potential in unlocking weather use cases for enterprises and research institutes,” Goyal said.
It’s a pretty interesting initiative, and shows how Zomato isn’t afraid to think big to solve problems from first principles — Zomato discovered that it didn’t have weather data for Indian cities, and went ahead and installed 650 weather stations to get it. Zomato has experimented with other interesting initiatives, including Intracity Legends, which delivered food from one city to another, and a veg-only fleet, which had been long-standing demand of its users. It’s this hustle that’s at the heart of India’s recent entrepreneurial boom, and like Zomato’s weather stations, could end up creating value for the country for generations to come.