Zomato has now officially announced the opening of online food delivery on their mobile app; which means that customers can now save more time. Originally launched as a ‘Restaurant Finder’ app, Zomato has now expanded into a domain which very few mobile apps have dared to venture.
As of now, the service would be available only in New Delhi—NCR region, but soon it would be rolled out across Mumbai, Bangalore and other cities.
Here is the official update from Zomato regarding online food delivery service:
Hat tip: @dotmanish
Last month, Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal conducted a Ask Me Anything session on Reddit, where he had given a hint that online delivery would be soon launched.
However, when Deepinder tweeted images of ‘loads of iPads’ arriving every hour at their office, and said that these would be deployed at restaurants for online food delivery, then it became clear that Zomato is indeed launching this highly anticipated service.
Loads of iPads arriving every hour to deploy at restaurants for our online ordering launch. Coming soon to @Zomato! pic.twitter.com/oOlm84EUSC
— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) April 15, 2015
Zomato would not track or verify the online orders for food, rather these iPads would be the direct link between Zomato and restaurant owners for tracking and fulfilling the online orders.
We checked their app immediately for online food delivery option, and its appearing all right.
A new filter: “Online Ordering” has been added, which can be used to find all those restaurants which supports this service as of now. If you check other cities such as Mumbai or Amritsar, then the option would not be appearing.
The Twist
Zomato’s focus always had been to provide the best option to the end customer, and keeping that in mind, they have introduced an amazing twist into the whole online delivery funnel: higher the rating of the restaurant, lower is the commission which would be charged on per order by Zomato.
As per MediaNama report, the restaurants which are 5 starred will be charged a commission of 7.5% per processed order, meanwhile those restaurants which are 1 starred will be charged 15% commission on every order.
Infact, Zomato is so serious about ratings that it has been made compulsory for the app user: In case the customer forgets to rate the restaurant, he won’t be able to make the next order unless the previous order is rated.
A big thumbs up for this ‘compulsory rating’ protocol, as it will help the consumers to filter out the restaurants which are not delivering on quality. And as the reviews are coming in from mobile app, directly from the end user, it cannot be tampered with.
Do share your experience of online food delivery on Zomato’s platform, by commenting right here!
Getting genuine online review/rating for any service or product continue to remain as one of the biggest challenges for online portals; particularly so with Indian online user environment. Portals like Zomato are countering this challenge. To a large extent Zomato does well as we can find reviewer’s photo inside the hotel etc., Compulsory rating/review from hotel customers and differential commission earning from hotels appears to be smart steps by Zomato. Execution of these steps is the key. So far we can see that Zomato is blending a good business sense with technology. We can expect more success for Zomato.
Malick.
Compulsory ratings may not be good as users will simple rate for the heck of it to get pass that point.
Well, Zomato is quite brave to venture in to something like this. In case of foodpanda, neither the portal nor the restaurant take responsibility in case of failed order.
So will Zomato take responsibility here? needs to be seen…
It is evident from here that e- commerce and online delivery is the next big thing that is going to turn around the way new age startups are going to work. By rolling out the delivery option ,zomato clearly trying to compete with foodpanda ,somehow.Also,Zomato is putting forward every step carefully so that they don’t make big mistakes.