Zomato's founder, Goyal, announced his latest project, the Weather Union, on X (previously Twitter). He said it is the biggest private infrastructure of its kind in the nation, with a proprietary network of more than 650 on-ground weather stations.
"Goyal stated that Zomato is providing free access to its weather infrastructure via an API (application programming interface) to all organizations and businesses in the nation.
There is a great deal of promise in this rich data set to open up weather use cases for businesses and research institutions. We anticipate that additional organizations and businesses will profit from this and contribute to the overall health of our economy, building on our previous collaboration with CAS-IIIT Delhi.
These Zomato-developed weather stations offer localized, up-to-date information on important meteorological factors like temperature, humidity, wind speed, precipitation, and more. Currently accessible in 45 major cities, we will shortly be extending this to additional Indian cities.
Hold on. Without charge? Really?
He said, "We think this data is too valuable to keep to ourselves or to profit from. As a Zomato Giveback, we are making this data available to everyone for the greater good."
Of course, if an enterprise customer is using the weatherunion API and API usage is causing excessive server costs, Zomato may get in touch with the particular user to ask for payment before allowing you to keep using the API.
Voluteers for weather station
According to the co-founder of Zomato, Weather Union wants to grow its infrastructure and will need volunteers to give them space so that it can do so.
Many Zomato workers have also set up weather stations in their houses. We welcome volunteers who would like to give us space on their property so we can install these weather stations and support the development of the country as we look forward to further expanding this infrastructure," he stated.
According to Goyal's post, he is looking forward to more companies and research institutions contributing to this initiative.
