Zomato’s founder, Deepinder Goyal, said that it will soon launch its 10-minute food delivery service, Zomato Instant. The food delivery platform was in talks with restaurant partners and cloud kitchens to pilot the 10-minute delivery service from Gurugram.
Goyal said the company will do 10-minute delivery through “a dense finishing stations’ network” located near high-demand customer neighborhoods.
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, “he said.
The “finishing stations” will be about 700-1,200 square feet in size. Zomato will use warehouses of Hyperpure (its business-to-business supplies business for restaurant partners) and rent new facilities in high-density areas, according to a company spokesperson.
The pilot will run from four stations in Gurugram starting next month. The company has committed $400 million to growing the quick-commerce category in India and is in talks to merge with ultra-fast grocery delivery startup Blinkit.
Zomato has already approved a plan to lend $150 million to Blinkit in phases. Goyal said customers were increasingly demanding quick delivery times and sorting by fast delivery was one of the most used features on Zomato.
The company will build Zomato Instant based on eight principles, including deep collaboration with restaurant partners, a traceable supply chain, and convenient packaging for quick and easy consumption. The finishing stations, he said, will house bestseller items (about 20-30 dishes) from various restaurants based on demand predictability and hyperlocal preferences.
Goyal said that “due to demand predictability at a hyperlocal level, the price for the customer will be significantly reduced, while the absolute margin/income for our restaurant partners as well as our delivery partners will remain the same.”