Food delivery platform Zomato said on Wednesday that it is making its takeaway service available for free to its restaurant partners.
“We will not be charging any commission, and will also forego the payment gateway charges we incur on all takeaway orders,” Zomato said in a blog post.
The company said it is already live with more than 55,000 restaurants for takeaways across the country and is serving ‘tens of thousands’ of such orders on a weekly basis.
Zomato said it is at 110% of the pre-covid GMV run rate in its food delivery business. The company said that while it has delivered over 13 crore orders since the first lockdown started in March, and there have been ‘zero’ reported cases of Covid transmission through food or its packaging, the growth has not been uniform, and the overall food service industry is still far from full recovery.
ETtech“One common solution that checked all the right boxes was the option for customers to pick up their own orders,” Zomato said. It added that the option addresses multiple issues such as enabling millions of customers who haven’t yet ordered since the beginning of the lockdown to start consuming restaurant food with a safe and convenient takeaway option. Takeaway also provides another avenue to access more customers to the restaurant partners and further grow their business, the company said.
“Takeaway on our app has witnessed tremendous growth with the order volume increasing by more than 200% in the last few months,” Zomato said.
Restaurants listed on the platform will show the option of delivery as well as takeaways. Customers can search for all restaurants offering takeaways using relevant filters on Zomato’s home page.
