The country’s top restaurants body National Restaurants Association of India’s latest run-in with food delivery aggregators over 10-minute delivery of food via separate apps follows a long series of tussles between the two sides.
Over the years—particularly since 2018-19—the NRAI has become vocal over the growing influence of aggregators like Zomato and Swiggy. This was also the time when the food delivery industry had come off from a consolidation phase and had started clocking rapid growth.
How has the latest issue emerged?
On January 9, ET was the first to report that NRAI was planning to knock the doors of India’s antitrust regulator over Zomato and Swiggy launching standalone apps for 10-minute food delivery, Blinkit’s Bistro and Snacc, respectively.
Through these apps, they will supply food products and beverages from their quick commerce darks stores. NRAI’s concerns included Zomato and Swiggy potentially using data to build their private food delivery brands without the involvement of restaurants.
Friday, Blinkit CEO Albinder Dhindsa responded to the NRAI’s concerns saying the app was being built as a standalone service and no data from Zomato was being used. “This is a standalone team, with a standalone app and no Zomato restaurant data has been used. We will not even use the Zomato app to market Bistro,” he said.
Later, another trade body—the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI)—also reached out to the commerce ministry, raising concerns about Snacc and Bistro offerings.
Also Read: Decoding Swiggy’s standalone app Snacc and the 15-minute food delivery frenzy
What was the first major flashpoint between NRAI and food delivery platforms?
The first major instance of frayed relations between NRAI and the companies came in 2019 when the body drummed up a major campaign against Zomato’s Gold membership programme.
Zomato Gold, which was first launched in 2017 as a membership programme with offers such as one+one free at restaurants, saw massive protests from restaurants, which started a #LogOut campaign, delisting themselves from the programme.
Following the backlash, Zomato amended the terms of the Gold programme and the company’s CEO Deepinder Goyal had posted on Twitter (now X) at the time saying, “Somewhere, we have made mistakes and things haven’t gone as planned. This is a wake up call that we need to do 100x more for our restaurant partners than we have done before”.
Gold was discontinued subsequently before being reintroduced with primary focus on food delivery in 2023. Even then, NRAI advised its members to step up their own loyalty programmes.
Also Read: Zepto Cafe crosses 50,000 orders per day within 4 weeks: Aadit Palicha
What other escalations happened?
A few years after NRAI raised issues with Zomato Gold, it filed a complaint with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) alleging anti competitive behaviour over several different issues. These included platforms favouring certain restaurants, offering food delivery through their own cloud kitchen brands and centralised kitchens, and the practice of data masking, wherein the restaurants do not receive data of the end consumer from the platforms.
In April 2022, the CCI said that there was, prima facie, a case being made against the food delivery platforms that warranted a deeper investigation. In November 2024, the director general of CCI reportedly submitted its findings, saying the food delivery companies breached competition laws.
A final decision from the antitrust regulator is still pending on this matter.
In addition to this major issue, NRAI has over time issued advisories to its member restaurants against multiple features or initiatives by Zomato and Swiggy.
In 2022, the body had cautioned restaurants against participating in Zomato’s and Swiggy’s dine-in discount programmes, saying eateries may have to pay higher commissions to the platforms for their dine-in customers compared to what they pay on other payment gateways.
