Around two years ago, barely 20 percent of the restaurants that were audited by Zomato passed the audit test on hygiene standards, thus providing the trigger for a model like Hyperpure.
The company had earlier started off by giving hygiene ratings to restaurants. However, something was still missing.
"We figured out that it is not like people don't want to do good work. They just don't know how to do good work. They don't know where to source clean vegetables from, how to dispose the garbage or how to actually dispose their cooking oil. So, now we have developed almost a full stack company. At Hyperpure, we source pesticide free veggies and antibiotic-free meat to supply to restaurants," said Deepinder Goyal, founder and chief executive officer of Zomato while speaking at the Entrepreneur Tech & Innovation Summit.
Hyperpure allows restaurants to buy everything from vegetables, fruits, poultry, groceries, meats, seafood to dairy and beverages. It claims to be working directly with farmers, mills, producers, and processors to source these products.
The company last week launched its Delhi warehouse, which is spread across 40,000 sq feet and plans to launch 20 more this year across the country.
The plan is to give the tag of Hyperpure to the restaurants on Zomato's platform who procure the products from Zomato so that the customers can make an informed choice. Currently, around 2,200 restaurants buy from Hyperpure.
The company also plans to collect the waste products from the restaurants which will be converted into compost and then supplied to farms.
Comparing India with European cities, Goyal said that the reason why eating out was more popular there because it is way cheaper, unlike the Indian market.
Goyal claims that by recycling and supplying compost to the farm, it will be able to reduce the cost of procuring products from the suppliers which will eventually reduce the price of food produced by the restaurants.
"If you go to Europe, eating out is cheaper than actually cooking at home. India is not there yet. The shift in the favor of restaurant industry will happen once you are able to price it under $1 Rs 60-70 per meal. That is a hard challenge for India," he said.
Founded in 2008 by Goyal, Zomato is currently present across 24 countries. It claims to be serving 65 million users every month across services such as restaurant reviews, restaurant discovery, food delivery and dining out transactions.
In terms of delivery, it claims to be recording 37 million orders on a monthly basis with an average ticket size of Rs 225.
For now, the biggest challenge for Zomato will be the audit of food. The company is also developing its own tech to make audit cheaper and scalable.
"Right now, we are able to sample 7-8 percent of the goods that we supply to the restaurants. The aim is to test as much as possible," said Goyal.
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