Zomato disables its 10-minute delivery service after it struggles to grow

Meanwhile, Zomato's food delivery engine might be sputtering as the gross order value of its food business rose 3 percent in Q2 (September quarter) compared to the previous quarter.

Zomato has disabled the option to place orders on its app via a 10-minute service (called Zomato Instant) since the beginning of this year as the company struggled to find ways of growing the service.

The food tech platform is pivoting its 10-minute food delivery service, which was piloted in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru last year, to a new product that may be announced later this month, according to people aware of the matter.

“It was a good value proposition for some areas in NCR and Bengaluru with large office-going or student crowds. But there were no growth vectors… It was not feasible to find a lot of such areas or expand the menu,” said a person in the know.

“It might also have been hurt because of a public backlash when the service was announced. It was hard to get the message across to customers that 10-minute deliveries won’t be done through delivery partners riding fast, but shorter distances,” they added.

When the pilot started last year, the company’s idea was to predict 20-30 most frequently ordered food items for an area, get specific restaurants to share pre-mixed versions of those orders to Zomato finishing stations, where the food can be quickly heated or cooked to be delivered within 10 minutes.

Restaurants like Biryani Blues, Dana Choga, Caterspoint and Chaayos, among others, had participated. It was apparent from the pilot that the most popular items included momos, poha, maggi and the like for the 10-minute service, according to a source.

“Instant is not shutting down. We are working on a new menu with our partners and rebranding the business. All finishing stations remain intact, and no people are impacted by this decision,” a Zomato spokesperson said.

ET was the first to report the development.

This was not the first time that a food aggregator platform tried to crunch delivery times. In 2015, Swiggy tied up with cloud kitchen operators such as Eatongo and Brekkie to deliver food in 15 minutes. But it faced challenges in unit economics and in serving hot and fresh food and decided not to scale up the venture without all the answers.

Around the same time, Ola Cafe, the food delivery business of Ola, experimented with quick food deliveries within a specified area. But the offering didn’t scale up and Ola Cafe was shut down in a year.

Meanwhile, Zomato's food delivery engine might be sputtering as the gross order value of its food business rose 3 percent in Q2 (September quarter) compared to the previous quarter. The growth of its food delivery business has slowed as it has become bigger – quarterly sales have grown only 22 percent from Rs 5,410 crore in Q2 of FY22 to Rs 6,631 crore in Q2 of FY23.