Food delivery app Zomato on Monday said it will launch its 10-minute food delivery offering as the 30-minute average delivery time is too slow.
"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," Deepinder Goyal, the company's founder and CEO, wrote in a blog post while announcing the launch of Zomato Instant.
Goyal said customers are increasingly demanding quicker answers to their needs. "They don't want to plan, and they don't want to wait. "In fact, sorting restaurants by fastest delivery time is one of the most used features on the Zomato app."
The company said it will pilot Zomato Instant with four stations in Gurugram from next month onwards.
Zomato said 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. "Sophisticated dish-level demand prediction algorithms, and future-ready in-station robotics are employed to ensure that your food is sterile, fresh and hot at the time it is picked by the delivery partner," the company said.
Each of these finishing stations will house bestseller items -- around 20-30 dishes -- from various restaurants based on demand predictability and hyperlocal preferences.
"Due to demand predictability at a hyperlocal level, we expect that the price for the customer will get significantly reduced, while the absolute rupee margin/income for our restaurant partners as well as our delivery partners, will remain the same," the food ordering company said.
Zomato clarified that in order to fulfil its quick delivery promise, it will not put any pressure on delivery partners to deliver food faster or penalise them for late deliveries. "The delivery partners are not informed of the promised time of delivery. Time optimisation does not happen on the road, and does not put any lives at risk."
The food delivery major owns a minority stake in quick commerce startup Blinkit
In an exchange filing last week, the company said it has received an approval from the board to grant a loan of up to $150 million (around ₹1,145 crore) to Blinkit.
"The board and the company at its meeting on March 15, 2022, has approved grant of loan up to $150 million to Grofers India in one or more tranches and delegated the authority to the senior management of the company to decide the key terms of the loan and execute the definitive documents at a future date," Zomato had said.
As per the company, the interest rate for the loan will be 12% per annum or higher with a tenor of not more than 1 year. This loan will support the capital requirements of Grofers in the near term and is in line with the company's stated intent of investing up to $400 million cash in quick commerce in India over the next two years, it added.
