According to CEO Deepinder Goyal, Zomato will not compete with its restaurant partners.

CEO Deepinder Goyal

According to his email, Bistro, the company’s app for rapid food delivery, is not a private label.

Zomato’s CEO, Deepinder Goyal, is addressing growing concerns from restaurant partners regarding the company’s new 10-minute delivery service, Bistro. In an attempt to calm fears, Goyal reassured restaurant owners that Zomato will never compete directly with them by operating its own kitchens or launching private-label brands. He clarified that Bistro is not a private label nor a Zomato-run kitchen, emphasizing that Zomato has always kept its focus as a restaurant aggregator, not a competitor.

This comes at a time when the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) has expressed concerns about the potential impact of Zomato’s quick delivery services like Zomato Everyday and Bistro—which rely on company-owned kitchens. The NRAI has even hinted at legal action against Zomato and Swiggy.

In his letter to restaurant partners, Goyal argued that Bistro isn’t an existential threat to the restaurant industry. He mentioned that even with 1,000 outlets, the Bistro service would make up just 0.5% of the overall market, and that the goal of the initiative isn’t to scale massively but rather to find a model that restaurants could adopt themselves. He added that the experiment’s aim is to explore how faster delivery times can drive greater demand for food delivery, helping expand the overall market.

Goyal also reassured restaurant partners that Bistro would operate as a separate app with no access to restaurant data, ensuring fair play. He believes that by reducing delivery times, customer repeat rates could increase, expanding the market and benefiting the restaurant ecosystem.

Zomato is also experimenting with ways to improve kitchen efficiency and reduce preparation time to make fast delivery possible, but Goyal acknowledged that solving these challenges is not easy. He also highlighted Zomato’s previous attempt at 10-minute deliveries, Zomato Instant, which didn’t work out as planned but did offer some learnings on kitchen preparation time.

With this clarification, Zomato hopes to balance its innovation in quick delivery with the needs of its restaurant partners, aiming to foster growth for all involved.

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