As quick services catch up with food aggregator platforms, Ant Group-backed Zomato Ltd is eyeing to deliver food in 10-minutes, the company’s founder Deepinder Goyal said in a blogpost on Monday.
With quick commerce space for groceries heating up, platforms such as Swiggy Instamart, run by Bundl Technologies Pvt Ltd, Ola Dash, operated by Ola’s parent ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd and Zepto, operated by Kiranakart Technologies Pvt Ltd, among others are guaranteeing 10-minute deliveries.
“After becoming a frequent customer of Blinkit (one of Zomato’s investments in the quick commerce space), I started feeling that the 30-minute average delivery time by Zomato is too slow, and will soon have to become obsolete. If we don’t make it obsolete, someone else will,” said Goyal in the blogpost.
He added, “Innovating and leading from the front is the only way to survive (and therefore thrive) in the tech industry. And here we are… with our 10-minute food delivery offering – Zomato Instant. Zomato will pilot Zomato Instant with four stations in Gurugram from next month onwards, the blogpost read.
The announcement comes days after it was reported that Zomato is in talks to merge with instant delivery service Blinkit (formerly Grofers) in an all-stock deal valuing Blinkit between $700 million and $800 million. Zomato had also extended a loan of $150 million to Blinkit in one or more tranches.
Incidentally, Zomato has been trying to make forays into the quick grocery delivery segment. In 2020 during the first Covid-19-induced lockdown, Zomato had started quick commerce business but had stopped operations in a couple of months. The company then made forays into the space with its investments in Blinkit. The company has invested over $100 million in Blinkit till date.
Zomato's finishing stations will house bestseller items, around 20-30 dishes, from various restaurants based on demand predictability and hyperlocal preferences, Goyal explained.
The fulfilment of its quick delivery promise relies on a dense finishing stations’ network, which is located in close proximity to high-demand customer neighbourhoods.
Due to demand predictability at a hyperlocal level, Zomato also expects the price for the customer to reduce significantly. Meanwhile, the absolute ₹ (rupee) margin/income for its restaurant as well as delivery partners, will remain the same.
Goyal further said that the company will not put any pressure on delivery partners to deliver food faster, and it will also not penalise delivery partners for late deliveries. The delivery partners are not informed of the promised time of delivery and time optimization does not happen on the road, and does not put any lives at risk.
He states that "Nobody in the world has so far delivered hot and fresh food in under 10 minutes at scale, and we were eager to be the first to create this category, globally!"
Moreover, it plans to rely on sophisticated dish-level demand prediction algorithms, and future-ready in-station robotics to be employed to ensure that the food is sterile, fresh and hot at the time it is picked by the delivery partner, Goyal further said.