Swiggy, Zomato, Amazon Starts Alcohol’s Home Delivery: Age-Proof Check, Delivery Charges?

With the start of Alcohol delivery offerings from major food aggregators, it seems to be emerging as the next big thing in India’s e-commerce scene. 

Alcohol Delivery Business Thriving

As we already know that Food aggregators such as Swiggy and Zomato are already offering alcohol delivery services in Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal.

Joining the rally, now BigBasket and Amazon also acquired licenses for delivering alcohol in West Bengal. 

With the latest move, it seems to be a lucrative business for e-commerce companies as many states continue to be under lockdown.

As the buyers are feeling cautious of visiting liquor stores to buy alcohol considering the risks involved. 

Before this, the start-ups like HipBar, Drinkify and Liqhub tried their hands at alcohol delivery but faced a lot of regulatory hurdles.

But citing the huge losses by state governments during the lockdown, the regulations have been eased. 

It has also attracted interest by many e-commerce firms that were eyeing the alcohol business having Statista estimates at Rs 2.4 lakh crore.

Use Of Technology For Verification

So far, the e-commerce firms who are interested in this space are currently investing in developing technology for age verification, as it is critical from a regulatory compliance standpoint. 

In case of Zomato, they have adopted a two-step verification process for ascertaining the age of the user.

On the other hand, Swiggy has developed an AI-based face recognition feature with OTP to automate age verification and user authentication.

How Does It Work?

A Swiggy spokesperson said, “We have mandated a one-time instant age verification followed by a selfie of the customer. The integrated solution instantly digitizes the customer’s identity card, checks if the customer’s selfie matches the picture on the card, and then checks if the customer is really present in it or if it is a photo of a photo,”.

Apart from this, the company has also introduced a crowd control feature for the safety of its delivery partners, which basically ensures that there is no overcrowding at the retail stores during peak hours.

Further, for deliveries, these companies are tying up with authorized retailers in specific cities.

For example, Zomato has a total of 250 retailers on board so far, and further planning to partner with all the authorized government retailers in the cities where it is active.

In the meantime, these e-commerce players are in talks with other states to scale up their services  but currently, their main focus is on getting the processes right. 

So far, Zomato and Swiggy, on average, are charging Rs 60-100 per order for delivery, basically, depends on the order size and distance covered.