Restaurant Search App Zomato Lays Off 300, 10% Of Staff, In Shift Away From Live Data Collection

http://tcrn.ch/1Kd74fZ
Some belt tightening underway at Zomato, the $1 billion+ restaurant discovery portal based out of India that is now active in 22 countries. TechCrunch has learned, and has now confirmed with the company, that Zomato is laying off around 300 staff, or just under 10% of its current workforce of 3,000, as it looks to cut costs in weaker parts of its business and shift more focus into revenue-generating areas like reservations.Significantly, the cuts are signalling a shift in the company's strategy. A bulk of those layoffs will be in the U.S. and focused on "content" teams. These are the people ('Zomans' as they are called internally) who collect data from restaurants listed on the Zomato platform, and were the core of its original "feet on the street" business model that set it apart from the likes of Yelp with staff-curated information.As part of the shift, the company will be dividing its business into two ...