Zomato unveils weather services infrastructure

NEW DELHI: Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal has unveiled what he called India’s first crowd-supported weather infrastructure. It is a proprietary network of over 650 on-ground weather stations, and is billed as the largest private infrastructure of its kind in India.

These weather stations, developed by Zomato, provide localised, real-time information on key weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall, among others can be seen at http://weatherunion.com , Goyal wrote on his X timeline, as he made announcement about it. Currently available across 45 large cities, it would be expanded in other Indian cities “very soon”, he said.

Excited to unveil India's first crowd-supported weather infrastructure, https://t.co/pUhhX8zKMe. A proprietary network of 650+ on-ground weather stations, it is the largest private infrastructure of its kind in our country.

These weather stations, developed by Zomato, provide… pic.twitter.com/lc5XQJJtO2

— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) May 8, 2024

“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”, Goyal’s X post read.

At Zomato, an online food aggregator, Goyal said it was crucial for them to have access to precise and real-time weather information to make the right business decisions to serve customers better. Hence, he said they took it upon themselves to develop a solution capable of empowering the business.

“We are now opening up free access to this (through an API) to all institutions and companies in the country. Wait. What? Free? Really? Yes, 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”, he wrote.

Goyal also apprised through his X post that a lot of Zomato employees have hosted weather stations at their homes. As Zomato looks forward to further expanding this infrastructure, Goyal urged volunteers who want to provide space on their premises to install these weather stations. (ANI)