Search and discovery, restaurant catalogue freshness, and the same real-time delivery constraints at consumer scale.
Zomato loops split between the discovery side and the delivery side, and the design questions differ accordingly. Discovery questions are about search relevance, ranking with personalisation, and keeping a restaurant catalogue fresh when menus, timings and availability change constantly and often through partner-side edits you do not control.
The delivery side shares Swiggy-shaped problems: live order tracking, partner assignment and ETA. Where Zomato rounds tend to go further is read scale - the browse and search path serves far more traffic than the order path, which makes caching strategy and cache invalidation on catalogue updates a natural line of questioning.
45-60 min
Medium difficulty, strings, heaps and graphs recurring.
60-90 min
Model a catalogue, cart or ordering flow in working code.
60 min
Search and discovery, catalogue freshness, live tracking at read scale.
45 min
Ownership, prioritisation and working with product constraints.
Read scale on the discovery path. Browse and search serve far more traffic than ordering, so caching strategy, denormalisation choices, and how the cache is invalidated when a partner edits a menu are natural and common follow-ups.
Frequently. Expect to model a catalogue, cart or ordering flow in working code, then extend it when the interviewer adds a requirement - the standard Indian product company build round.
Be able to separate retrieval from ranking, describe the features you would rank on, explain how personalisation enters without destroying cacheability, and say how you would evaluate whether the change helped.
Practise the rounds Zomato actually runs, and get scored on where you stand.