Zomato Originals: Food app starts streaming video

On Monday, Zomato officially launched its Over The Top (OTT) streaming feature on its app, with the video tab offering original programming spanning “comedy, reality, fiction, advice, celebrity interviews” and a ‘Sneak Peek’ tab purporting to tell the “story behind a restaurant”.

‘Zomato Originals’ will feature 18 shows exclusive to its platform, divided into 3-15 minute chunks of programming. The shows will be available for free.

The shows feature the likes of celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor (who will host Food and You—a “3-minute daily show that breaks myths and changes the way you think about food and your body”), anchor Janice Sequeria (who will host ‘Starry meals with Janice’, where she will explore the kitchens of Bollywood stars, eating their ‘personal faves’), comedian Sahil Shah (in ‘Grandmaster Chef’, where he will ‘learn age-old recipes from his own grandmother and everyone else’s in town’) and YouTuber Jordinidian (with ‘Dude, where’s the food’), and more.

In a blogpost, Zomato specified the format of its video offerings, saying “Available in an all-new “Videos” tab in the Zomato app, videos will be categorized by genre letting users watch 3-15 minute videos across shows, recipes and Sneak Peek restaurant stories. The Zomato video experience will launch with 2000+ videos that include Zomato Originals, which will be available to stream in India, while Sneak Peek and recipe videos can be accessed anywhere in the world.”

The ‘Sneak Peek’ tab present shorts short, vertical-format videos, and is available in 18 cities at present. Zomato describes it as “a curated offering which would help you learn more about a restaurant that might be new to you and, in turn allow it to tell their story, their quirks, their voice.” The company says they have handpicked “a team of expert editors, writers and filmmakers, to profile carefully chosen restaurants.”

Zomato released the trailer for their services on Monday—you can watch it here.

While the OTT space already features players like Hotstar, Amazon Prime and Netflix, Zomato will not be starting from scratch as the company already has an audience on its platform. Its FY19 annual report stated that the app had over 70 million monthly active users worldwide.

The company’s blog post stated, “Interestingly, most of our users spend a lot of time on our app on a daily basis. This presents the perfect opportunity to discover our video food streams.”