FOCOS Assignment 1

Problem Statement:
Zomato wants to scale District, its premium multi-experience food and lifestyle brand (dining, pop-ups,
events, chef-led collabs, culture experiences), from metros to 100+ Tier 2/3 Indian cities while maintaining
brand equity, operational efficiency, and market fit in vastly diverse and underpenetrated markets.

Desired Outcome:
We are looking to achieve the following outcomes as a part of this growth & expansion initiative:

• Launch District in 100 cities over the next 12 months with high local resonance and operational
sustainability.

• Build District’s presence as a cultural and experiential brand, not just a food delivery platform.

• Achieve a profitable, scalable model with hyperlocal customization and minimal infra risk.

• Create a network of city-level micro-ambassadors, creators, and experience partners who drive local
adoption.

Current Challenges:
We are currently facing the following challenges in the expansion of District to 100+ cities:

• Lack of premium infrastructure in Tier 2/3 cities.

• Highly fragmented regional food and culture preferences.

• Low brand awareness of District outside metro cities.

• Limited spending capacity for premium experiences.

• Inconsistent access to quality local talent and partners.

Strategy Plan:
The entire strategy plan is divided into 3 stages:

• Initiate – Run multiple short experiments with small budgets for testing scalability

• Replicate – Replicate the success of the initiatives that worked by investing money & effort

• Automate – Automate the repetitive processes to build engines

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Let us understand what are some initiatives that we would like to work on to build a solid strategy plan that
helps us to achieve the desire outcome.

New Initiatives:

We are planning to launch the following initiatives to ensure that we overcome the above-mentioned
challenges to achieve the desired outcomes. We will be going ahead using the Pareto Rule (80:20) rule to
qualify the initiatives that fetch us the best results.

Initiative Sets – Curate District Exclusive Experiences – Events, Discovery & Discounts

The first and foremost action that district must take will be to Curate experiences that are unique to District
platform. The following experiences are unique and will add up to the overall growth & adoption of the
platform due to exclusive ticketing rights:

1. Musician led events unique to the district platform with names like Arijit Singh, Diljeet Dosanjh,
A.R Rahman and more
2. Stand-up comedy events unique to the cities & district from local creators as people crave
experiences
3. Events like Zomaland to be hosted in the cities for better event experiences for people in the tier 2
cities like Jaipur, Lucknow and more
4. Curate a local list of restaurants, cafes & clubs that are ranked based on themes like romantic,
party, single frenzy, epicurean and more.
5. Offer customer delight discounts for dining and unique experiences for the first 30 days to drive
bookings on the platform
6. Incentivize cafes, restaurants & clubs for promoting District to real users by offering cross
experience discounts. For example – For a booking of BBQ Nation via District you get Rs 100 off
to a stand-up show with Harsh Gujral.
7. Launch a “Create an experience/event” section for local organizers to host hyper-local events to
find more local users.
8. Collaborate with Micro Influencers that can spread awareness about the discounts, events,
experiences & more
9. Focus on co-creating with the user for local user generated content that can be distributed via
existing distribution channels
10. Focus on building user generated content with the specialty of the region, for example – what
makes a perfect Agra ka Petha
11. Promote cross platform promotion by promoting District via using the packaging of Blinkit with
the help of QRs, upcoming events & curated experiences

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While all these sounds like a great idea, their execution will play a major role in the success of expanding
to 100+ tier-II and tier-III cities. But now we need to measure all the activities with the help of KPIs.

Measurement:
Every plan is a fluke if it cannot be backed by data and only the success that can be tracked back with a
formula can be replicated. Therefore, to ensure that we have complete control over what we are doing we
need to ensure that we are measuring everything at hand.

To measure the above ideas, we will be looking at the following KPIs:

• Event Bookings per City – Measures real demand for each experience type across regions
• UGC Volume per Campaign – Indicates how engaging and share-worthy the experiences are
• Active Partner Count – Shows how effectively local restaurants, clubs, and creators are onboarded
• Offer Redemption Rate – Reflects conversion efficiency of promotions into real transactions
• User Retention Rate (30-day) – Tracks stickiness and repeat value of the District platform
• User MoM Growth – Tracks the user growth per month per initiative

And the North Star Metric for this entire strategy would be as following:
• Change in Monthly Active Experience-Driven Users (MAEDUs)
Percentage Change in the number of unique users who attend and book District experience (event,
dining, or content) in a given time period.

Expected Outcomes:
Basis the above strategy we hope to achieve the following outcomes:

• District scales to 50+ Tier 2/3 cities with strong local adoption and cultural relevance.
• Zomato evolves into a premium experiential brand beyond food delivery.
• Over 3,000 creators and partners drive a self-sustaining experience ecosystem.
• ₹40–50 Cr GMV generated through events, bundles, and cross-platform plays.
• 1L+ UGC assets power low-CAC, high-visibility organic growth.
• 35–40% users return within 30 days, boosting retention and lifetime value.

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