Zomato says confident to make profit from inter-city food delivery

NEW DELHI: Online food aggregator Zomato on Wednesday said that its inter-city food delivery will start making profit even at "a slight scale" amid concerns of the service being a logistical nightmare and a high cash-burn model.

Zomato's VP of Global Growth Siddharth Jhawar told IANS that this is a business and they want to be profitable.

"Even at a slight scale, we'll start making a profit. As we grow and with awareness, when people start making our offering a part of their celebrations with larger orders, we'll be there," he added.

Zomato recently launched 'Intercity Legends' that will allow customers to order dishes and delicacies from famous outlets and restaurants in other cities.

Jhawar said that food is freshly prepared by the restaurant and packed in reusable and tamper-proof containers to keep it safe during air transits.

"State-of-the-art mobile refrigeration technology preserves the food without the need to freeze it or add any kind of preservatives," he explained.

Once you receive your order, you can microwave, air-fry, or pan-fry the food, just like any other dish out of the refrigerator.

The company is currently running this service in the Delhi-NCR region and has just started in Bengaluru.

"That said, we want to be able to serve and delight as many customers as possible. India has over 100 domestic airports. Any airport city could be a potential market. To start with, we want to serve customers in top metro cities," Jhawar told IANS.

Zomato already covers 10 cities for the 'Intercity Legends' service.

"Over time, we will keep taking inputs from customers and keep adding to our supply. We will ramp up gradually and have plans to extend this to top cities, as we receive customer feedback about what's working and what can be done better," Jhawar added.

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal earlier said that the new service will let customers "order and relish legendary dishes like baked rosogollas from Kolkata, biryani from Hyderabad, Mysore Pak from Bengaluru, kebabs from Lucknow, butter chicken from Old Delhi, or pyaaz kachori from Jaipur".

Currently, the list of cities to order from are Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Bengaluru, Mathura, Chennai, Agra, and Bhubaneswar.

The users will only be able to order certain iconic dishes from a few select restaurants.