ETMarkets.comOnline food ordering platform Zomato has rolled out Zomato Pay — the third iteration of its dining out programme — in several cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.
In August, the company said it was recalibrating its loyalty programmes and had closed new signups and renewals for its flagship programme Zomato Pro, while also revising the terms of its co-branded credit card with RBL Bank.
Zomato Pay will help customers make payments at partner restaurants through the Zomato app. They will also be able to avail of discounts and cashbacks.
Zomato Pay, which is not a subscription product unlike Zomato Pro, also includes a ‘Vibe Check’ feature which allows eateries to post short videos — in a format much like Instagram Stories — to enable better discovery of their outlets.
Its rollout comes at a time when Zomato and rival Swiggy have faced flak from restaurant operators for deep discounting.
Recently, hundreds of restaurant outlets went offline from Swiggy’s dining out platform after industry body, the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), told members that discount programmes such as Zomato Pay and Swiggy Diner were against the interests of restaurant owners.
Zomato had run a pilot programme of Zomato Pay in Hyderabad, and started pitching it to restaurant owners in July, weeks ahead of pulling the plug on Zomato Pro.
In one of the videos circulated to restaurant partners ahead of the pilot, Zomato pointed out that the programme will have Zomato-sponsored cashbacks, but restaurant owners will be able to run their own promotions and would have access to data insights such as conversion rates from the ‘Vibe Check’ feature, among others.
Zomato Pro was launched in 2020 and the more premium Zomato Pro Plus in 2021.
They allowed customers to get discounts while ordering food online or dining out at partner restaurants. The programme replaced the Zomato Gold membership offering, which itself had undergone several revisions after facing severe opposition from restaurant owners for giving customers lucrative dining out offers.
Swiggy also operates a loyalty programme called Swiggy One, under which it offers a common membership for the bouquet of services it provides, including food delivery, quick-commerce and local door-to-door package delivery. Swiggy One was launched last November.
In May, Swiggy also acquired dining out platform Dineout from Times Internet in an all-stock deal worth around $120 million.
Times Internet is the digital media arm of Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd (Times Group), which publishes the Economic Times.
In an earnings call for April-June quarter, Zomato’s chief financial officer Akshant Goyal had said that the company was looking beyond loyalty programmes to “meaningfully increase customer frequency”.
“I think if you have to go from where we are today and meaningfully increase customer frequency, we will have to look beyond these loyalty programmes and look at introducing newer use cases, which perhaps leads to a lot of the current offline spend on restaurant food moving on to our platform,” Goyal had said in August.
For the April-June period, Zomato reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 186 crore, compared with a loss of Rs 359.70 crore in January-March 2022 and Rs 360.70 crore in the quarter ended June 30, 2021.
Zomato’s topline grew to Rs 1,413.90 crore in April-June this year, against Rs 844.40 crore in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, Zomato vice-president Siddharth Jhawar, who was leading the ‘Intercity Legends’ product, has quit the Gurugram-based company to join Tiger Global-funded machine learning-based advertising tech platform MOLOCO to lead its India operations.
Jhawar joined Zomato in April last year from Hotstar, where he was the head of strategic initiatives. He announced his exit from Zomato in a LinkedIn post.
Following Jhawar’s departure, Blinkit executive Kamayani Sadhwani will lead ‘Intercity Legends’ for Zomato.
Zomato acquired quick commerce platform Blinkit earlier this year.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Sadhwani is director, category at Blinkit, and was the India lead for enterprise-wide initiatives at Coca Cola before that.
In August, the company said it was recalibrating its loyalty programmes and had closed new signups and renewals for its flagship programme Zomato Pro, while also revising the terms of its co-branded credit card with RBL Bank.
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Zomato Pay, which is not a subscription product unlike Zomato Pro, also includes a ‘Vibe Check’ feature which allows eateries to post short videos — in a format much like Instagram Stories — to enable better discovery of their outlets.
Its rollout comes at a time when Zomato and rival Swiggy have faced flak from restaurant operators for deep discounting.
Recently, hundreds of restaurant outlets went offline from Swiggy’s dining out platform after industry body, the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), told members that discount programmes such as Zomato Pay and Swiggy Diner were against the interests of restaurant owners.
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Zomato had run a pilot programme of Zomato Pay in Hyderabad, and started pitching it to restaurant owners in July, weeks ahead of pulling the plug on Zomato Pro.
In one of the videos circulated to restaurant partners ahead of the pilot, Zomato pointed out that the programme will have Zomato-sponsored cashbacks, but restaurant owners will be able to run their own promotions and would have access to data insights such as conversion rates from the ‘Vibe Check’ feature, among others.
Zomato Pro was launched in 2020 and the more premium Zomato Pro Plus in 2021.
They allowed customers to get discounts while ordering food online or dining out at partner restaurants. The programme replaced the Zomato Gold membership offering, which itself had undergone several revisions after facing severe opposition from restaurant owners for giving customers lucrative dining out offers.
Swiggy also operates a loyalty programme called Swiggy One, under which it offers a common membership for the bouquet of services it provides, including food delivery, quick-commerce and local door-to-door package delivery. Swiggy One was launched last November.
In May, Swiggy also acquired dining out platform Dineout from Times Internet in an all-stock deal worth around $120 million.
Times Internet is the digital media arm of Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd (Times Group), which publishes the Economic Times.
In an earnings call for April-June quarter, Zomato’s chief financial officer Akshant Goyal had said that the company was looking beyond loyalty programmes to “meaningfully increase customer frequency”.
“I think if you have to go from where we are today and meaningfully increase customer frequency, we will have to look beyond these loyalty programmes and look at introducing newer use cases, which perhaps leads to a lot of the current offline spend on restaurant food moving on to our platform,” Goyal had said in August.
For the April-June period, Zomato reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 186 crore, compared with a loss of Rs 359.70 crore in January-March 2022 and Rs 360.70 crore in the quarter ended June 30, 2021.
Zomato’s topline grew to Rs 1,413.90 crore in April-June this year, against Rs 844.40 crore in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, Zomato vice-president Siddharth Jhawar, who was leading the ‘Intercity Legends’ product, has quit the Gurugram-based company to join Tiger Global-funded machine learning-based advertising tech platform MOLOCO to lead its India operations.
Jhawar joined Zomato in April last year from Hotstar, where he was the head of strategic initiatives. He announced his exit from Zomato in a LinkedIn post.
Following Jhawar’s departure, Blinkit executive Kamayani Sadhwani will lead ‘Intercity Legends’ for Zomato.
Zomato acquired quick commerce platform Blinkit earlier this year.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Sadhwani is director, category at Blinkit, and was the India lead for enterprise-wide initiatives at Coca Cola before that.
( Originally published on Nov 07, 2022 )
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