Your New Weatherman, Zomato

Zomato Ltd. on Tuesday launched 'India's first' crowd-supported weather infrastructure—weatherunion.com.

CEO Deepinder Goyal took to social media platform X to make the announcement. "A proprietary network of 650+ on-ground weather stations, it is the largest private infrastructure of its kind in our country," he wrote.

These weather stations, developed by the food tech giant, provide localised, real-time information on key weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall, etc.

Currently, it is available across 45 large cities and the company is planning to expand this to other Indian cities very soon.

"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," Goyal wrote.

Zomato said that it has opened free access to weatherunion.com's database 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," Goyal said.

Zomato's founder also mentioned that the company's employees have hosted weather stations at their homes.

"As we look forward to further expanding this infrastructure, we welcome volunteers who want to provide us space on their premises to install these weather stations and contribute to nation-building," he added.