Zomato unveils a crowd-supported real-time weather monitoring system

Zomato on Wednesday unveiled crowd-supported real-time weather monitoring infrastructure. Dubbed Weather Union, the company highlighted that the system is the first of its kind in India and the largest private infrastructure in its sector in the country. Announcing the platform, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal said its API will be made free-to-access for all institutions and companies for the “betterment of our economy”. The food delivery company is also looking for volunteers who can offer space on their premises to set up weather monitoring stations to take the project forward.

Goyal announced the Weather Union in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) and said that more than 650 on-ground weather stations have already been installed and are currently functional. These stations provide real-time weather data on various parameters including temperature, rain intensity, total rainfall, humidity, wind speed and direction and others.

The company has also created a Website Where people can see live weather conditions in 45 cities of the country. Zomato is planning to expand its network to more cities soon. The platform refreshes live weather conditions every minute to reflect current conditions. It also claims about 96 percent signal accuracy. The platform can show 12 different weather parameters.

According to Zomato, Weather’s infrastructure captures real-time data which is processed by its in-house machine learning models. The processed information will be shared with delivery partners to help them be prepared and equipped to deal with any unusual weather conditions. Notably, the Zomato app also has a surge pricing feature where users will have to pay an additional amount to order food during rain or any other weather related disturbance.

Goyal also revealed that the company will provide free API access to the infrastructure to all institutions and companies. Calling it a Zomato giveback, the CEO said the decision was taken to promote public well-being and the productivity of the economy. Interested organizations can visit the Weather Union platform to access the API or find buttons to download past data. However, it should be noted that the company does not provide any weather forecast data, only real-time weather data.

Furthermore, Goyal highlighted that to set up the first phase of the weather monitoring system, the help of several Zomato employees had to be taken, who installed on-ground weather stations at their premises. However, intending to expand the project, the company is looking for more volunteers to offer what it can. A volunteer form has been added to the Weather Union website.