BENGALURU: Fun, music and food was all that Zomaland was about. Apart from more than 60 food stalls being present at the venue, the three-day carnival at NICEL Ground showcased artistes like Harrdy Sandhu, Ritviz, Kanan Gill, Tanmay Bhat and Gaurav Kapoor who took the crowd by storm.
“Bengaluru has always been a key city for us and in the second season of Zomaland, we decided to give it a grander scale by hosting it in a much bigger space close to the city. Compared to last year, we have a 20-30 per cent higher footfall. People have great options as different artistes are performing at the Tik Tok theatre stage as well as the Zomaland main stage. The line-up is bigger, and the number of people this time is close to 40,000,” said Chaitanya Mathur, global head, Zomato Live.
It was a tough time for the food platform to choose from several restaurants and put a few out on the ground. “Curation is an important part of what we do. Zomaland is a discovery platform and we want our users to come and discover food. A food carnival allows you to have pocket-friendly meals that you can try. We look into hygiene ratings on the app, newly-launched restaurants, interesting cuisines and other such factors,” added 30-year-old Mathur.
Among several restaurants that put up stalls and pulled a huge crowd were Khichdi Experiment, Chandni Chowk 2 Bangalore, Wingsmen, and Buffalo Wild Wings. “It was our first time here at Zomaland. We got an opportunity to serve 16 kinds of veg khichdis along with two non-veg khichdis that we have recently introduced,” said Shishir Rai, who handles the offline marketing for Khichdi Experiment. CE also spoke to Javed Parsa, owner of Parsa’s, Koramangala, which saw people waiting to grab their well-known Kashmiri wazwan. “Parsa’s in Bengaluru is our third outlet outside J&K. When we got this opportunity, we thought of giving it a try as we had no idea of what a food carnival is like. But it’s beyond our expectations. About 80 per cent of our customers here did not know about our outlet, so this was a good exposure for us,” said Srinagar-based Parsa.
Sanjana Sharma, a 26-year-old working professional, seemed visibly excited to be at the event for the first time. “We are exploring all the food stalls out here and also looking forward to eating lots of desserts,” she said. Another visitor, Deena Pinto, a lifestyle blogger, said, “The organisers have done a great job in setting up such a huge event. I took the Metro from MG Road and it was an easy journey here.”