Zomato To Roll Out 10-Minute Food Delivery Service: All You Need To Know

Raju Das, who works with Zomato, waiting at Sector 104, Noida.

(Photo: Tridip K Mandal/The Quint)

Days after reports emerged that Zomato will acquire 10-minute delivery service Blinkit, the food delivery giant announced Zomato Instant – a 10-minute food delivery service.

The pilot is set to launch next month with four stations in Gurugram.

The company prefaced this announcement by saying that the service won't put any pressure on the delivery partners to deliver food faster, nor 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," Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal said in a blog post.

The move has faced considerable backlash on social media, with users raising concerns about the safety of the delivery agents as well as the quality of the food.

Blinkit, formerly known as Grofers, faced backlash last year for pushing its gig workers to ensure 10-minute deliveries.

How It Will Work

Zomato says it will rely on a dense network of finishing stations located close to high-demand neighbourhoods.

It plans to use algorithms to predict customer demands at a hyperlocal level and house around 20 to 30 bestselling dishes from various restaurants at these finishing stations.

"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," it says.

Zomato says it will keep its focus on affordability, quality, hygiene, safety of delivery partners, convenient packaging with minimal use of plastic, and deep collaboration with restaurant partners.

Why Zomato Is Moving Towards 10-Minute Delivery

Zomato says its customers are increasingly demanding quicker gratification, without planning or waiting.

Sorting restaurants by fastest delivery time is one of the most used features on the Zomato app, according to Deepinder Goyal.

"After becoming a frequent customer of Blinkit, 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," he writes.

Innovating and leading from the front is the only way to survive and thrive in the tech industry, he adds in the blog post.

Zomato predicts that this service will significantly reduce the price for the customer (at least 50 percent), while the margins for restaurant partners as well as delivery partners will remain the same.