Zomato, an online food delivery platform’s co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal has unveiled India’s first crowd-supported weather infrastructure, which would provide localised, real-time information on key weather parameters like temperature, wind speed, humidity, rainfall and more, which will be called ‘Weather Reunion’.
The weatherunion.com is a proprietary network of over 650 on-ground weather stations. It is currently available across 45 cities, and the company said that it will be expanding this in other cities very soon.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Goyal said, “At Zomato, it was crucial for us to have access to precise and real-time weather information to make the right business decisions to serve our customers better. Hence, we took it upon ourselves to develop a solution capable of empowering us on this front.”
“This rich data holds significant potential in unlocking weather use cases for enterprises and research institutes. Having already collaborated with CAS – IIT Delhi, we expect more institutions and companies to benefit from this and contribute towards the greater good of our economy,” he added.
The company has also opened up free access to this network (through an API) to all institutions and companies in the country.
“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 the public good,” the co-founder said.
The real-time weather data can be used by multiple companies and public institutions to boost productivity and the economy, he added.
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In April, Zomato upscaled the platform fee by 25 per cent to Rs 5 from the previous Rs 4 in specific markets. The food tech giant has attributed this adjustment to business decisions made within the company. According to company sources, the hike in platform fees applies to major cities like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, among others.
When asked the spokesperson about the move, he told news agency PTI, “These are business calls which we take basis various factors from time to time”.
Inputs from IANS
