Food delivery platform Zomato has seen online food delivery getting back to almost 85 percent of pre-COVID levels, the company said in a blog post published on September 22. The company highlighted that food delivery volumes have recovered and even exceeded pre-COVID numbers in certain parts of the country.
As per city based numbers tracked by the InfoEdge backed startup, cities like Delhi and Mumbai have recovered to 95 percent of pre-COVID numbers. Others like Kolkata, Patna, Jamshedpur, Siliguri and Ranchi have recovered fully. Large metros like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai are still at less than 80 percent recovery.
The orders on Zomato have been steadily rising with August having seen some 75 to 80 percent recovery, as per its report released last month. The company had then said that it would see business getting back to pre-COVID levels in the coming two to three months.
While Zomato seems to have recorded a sharp recovery, industry insiders pointed out that the overall food delivery industry is still clocking only 60 to 70percent volumes in terms of number of orders. Sources said that some bit of recovery has been driven by more restaurants opening up and erstwhile dine-in only restaurants starting online deliveries. But overall restauranteurs say they are hoping to recover some business in the upcoming festive season.
Interestingly, many affluent families are ordering online since expensive restaurants are selling their food online. Overall spends on premium restaurants have gone up by 25 percent, said Zomato.
Even group orders have gone up, with order sizes having gone up by 20 percent over pre-COVID levels. Single person meals which used to constitute 60 percent of the total orders on Zomato have fallen, still lingering at 50 to 70 percent volumes across the country.
This shows that many consumers are staying with families or even arranging friends to come over at home and ordering in rather than stepping out.
As people are wary of moving out and eating in community gatherings, Zomato has registered a spike in business during the festive occasions like Raksha Bandhan, Janmashtami, Independence Day and the like when consumers have preferred to get their food delivered.
Zomato has been in the news lately because of its plans to hit the public markets next year. The company which recently raised $100 million from Tiger Global is valued at around $3.3 billion post-money. In an internal note Deepinder Goyal, the founder of the company had said they had around $250 million in their bank and was planning to raise it up to $600 million with some marquee investors joining the cap-table.
Zomato’s move to hit the public markets has been interesting even at a time when COVID-19 has brutally affected the food and beverages industry.
While food delivery is the cornerstone of the Zomato business, its other verticals like grocery delivery have been wound up, dining business for Zomato Gold has been affected and its cloud kitchen business has been scaled back too.
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