Zomato rebrands 10-minute food delivery service; says Gold programme has 9 lakh+ signups

Zomato said it will rebrand its 10-minute food-delivery service, Instant, to Zomato Everyday, to be launched in a few weeks.

The service will focus on delivering "home-style cooked meals at affordable prices," Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said in the company's third-quarter earnings statement.

"We believe that this is a large opportunity in a market like India and is relatively untapped currently. We plan to launch this soon in the next few weeks," Deepinder said.

Zomato launched Zomato Instant in March last year. The service promised to deliver food within 10 minutes, making Zomato the first food-delivery aggregator to offer the service.

According to Deepinder, frequent use of the company's recently acquired Blinkit quick-delivery service made him realise that Zomato's 30-minute average delivery time was too slow.

"It (slower delivery times) will soon have to become obsolete. If we don’t make it obsolete, someone else will," he had noted in a company blog post last year.

Through select finishing stations, Zomato said it would maintain bestseller items of various restaurants based on demand predictability and hyperlocal preferences.

It is unclear if Zomato intends to fulfill deliveries under Zomato Everyday in 10 minutes.

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Zomato Gold

Zomato Gold, the company's first loyalty programme, which was remodeled to Zomato Pro, made a comeback in late January. The new membership feature has witnessed over 9 lakh signups already, according to the company.

Zomato believes the Gold programme will be a significant growth lever in the upcoming quarters. "We expect this program to drive loyalty and higher frequency of ordering going forward," Deepinder said.

The feature comes with an 'on-time guarantee' which assures customers a cashback of Rs 100 if the order isn't delivered in time.

Gold members also get priority access to more restaurants during peak times, and offers from a number of restaurants on both delivery and dining out along with free delivery on orders of a minimum value. Intercity delivery will also be exclusively available to Gold members.

Zomato expects the Gold programme to be profitable in the longrun.

"The short-term negative impact of Zomato Gold (due to free delivery benefit) will be offset by improvements in other revenue and fixed and variable cost drivers. In the long term, we believe we will be able to make the Zomato Gold program itself profitable," the company noted in the statement.