Zomato's Deepinder Goyal announces free weather monitoring service with 650 stations

Zomato has launched WeatherUnion.com, a crowd-supported weather monitoring service. Founder Deepinder Goyal made the announcement on Wednesday stating that the proprietary network of over 650 on-ground weather stations is the largest private infrastructure of its kind in the country. The service will provide localised, real-time information on key weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, and rainfall.

The service is currently available across 45 major Indian cities. However, Zomato plans to broaden this network to other cities in the near future.

"The data collected by these weather stations holds significant potential in unlocking weather-related use cases for enterprises and research institutes," Deepinder Goyal said in a post on social media platform X.

Zomato has collaborated with the Center for Atmospheric Sciences (CAS) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi to develop the WeatherUnion.com system and expects that this initiative will extend its benefits to more institutions and companies.

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."

Zomato has made access to this weather data free for all institutions and companies in the country through an API.

"We believe that this data is too valuable to keep to ourselves or to monetize; therefore, as a Zomato Giveback, we are opening up access to this data to everyone for the public good," Goyal added.

According to Goyal, multiple companies and public institutions should use real-time weather data as it can boost the productivity of the Indian economy.