‘Zomato Giveback’: Deepinder Goyal unveils India’s 1st crowd-supported weather infrastructure

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Goyal shared the link (https://weatherunion.com) to his latest initiative and informed that with a proprietary network of 650+ on-ground weather stations, the Weather Union is the largest private infrastructure of its kind in our country.

“These weather stations, developed by Zomato, provide localised, real-time information on key weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall etc,” he said.  

Currently available across 45 large cities, these weather stations will expand in other Indian cities “very soon”.

Goyal, in his post, said that the “rich data” from these weather stations hold a 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,” he said.

Sharing how the company decided to come up with open-source weather infra, 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.”

‘Free? Really? Yes’

Goyal said Zomato is opening up free access to its weather infra through an API  (Application Programming Interface) to all institutions and companies in the country as a part of “Zomato Giveback”. 

“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 said. 

“Multiple companies and public institutions should use real-time weather data, to boost the productivity of our economy,’ he added.

‘We welcome volunteers’

The Zomato co-founder said Weather Union is looking forward to expanding its infrastructure and thus needs volunteers to provide space to install them.

“Also, a lot of Zomato 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 said.

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Published: 08 May 2024, 05:02 PM IST