Zomato follows Zepto, plans to deliver food in 10 minutes

New Delhi: Deepinder Goyal, the founder of online meal delivery service Zomato, stated in a blog on March 21 that the company wants to deliver food to consumers in a record time of 10 minutes, following in the footsteps of grocery delivery companies.

"I began to suspect that Zomato's 30-minute average delivery time is too slow and will soon become obsolete. Someone else will render it obsolete if we don't "Goyal stated.

"In the tech business, the only way to survive (and thus grow) is to innovate and lead from the front. And here we are... with Zomato Instant, our 10-minute meal delivery service "Goyal elaborated.

According to Goyal, the fulfilment of his speedy delivery guarantee is dependent on a dense network of finishing stations positioned adjacent to high-demand customer neighbourhoods.

The company will also rely heavily on dish-level demand prediction algorithms and in-station robotics to ensure that the food is sterile, fresh, and hot when the delivery partner picks it up.

Based on predictability, Zomato will display bestseller items - roughly 20-30 dishes from partner restaurants throughout its finishing stations.

It also says that the prices of the things will be decreased if the 10-minute model is followed.

"Because of the predictability of demand at the hyperlocal level, we estimate that the pricing for the client will be greatly decreased, while the absolute rupees margin/income for our restaurant partners and delivery partners will remain the same," Goyal added.

Zomato Instant, as it will be known, will begin a pilot programme with four outlets in Gurugram in April.

This move comes at a time when Zomato is making aggressive investments in food-tech and robotics firms. It made a $5 million investment in Mukunda Foods, a robotics startup that designs and manufactures smart robotic equipment to automate food preparation in restaurants, last week.

Previously, it made investments in ad-tech business Adonmo and B2B software platform UrbanPiper Technology as part of a bigger strategy to invest $1 billion in startups.