Zomato, one of India’s largest start-up companies and food delivery app recently came out to announce that they have been testing out deliveries within 10 minutes calling it Zomato Instant. This has had mixed reactions from people as many have welcomed this new service as it promotes efficiency while others are worried it would compromise the quality of food or put stress on the restaurants and delivery partners.
Ms. Mahua Moitra, a member of the Lok Sabha and member of the All-India Trinamool Congress party took to her Twitter account to put out her thoughts on the matter. She said that these types of deliveries should not be allowed by the Indian government. She said that no civilised society should allow these types of things to happen as they are putting the lives of delivery partners and other people on the road at a risk as they are forced to deliver the food within 10 minutes which is such a short amount of time. This will definitely cause more stress on delivery partners whose lives are already destitute.
She even went on to say that she will take action against this and raise this issue in the parliament soon.
Nevertheless, Zomato had started a pilot project for Zomato Instant in New Delhi which was a failure. Deliveries ended up taking around 20 minutes, double than the promised time. Due to this, their Bangalore Pilot has been postponed indefinitely until they have more clarity and data for this revolutionary service.
Zomato also urged the public that this feature will not put any pressure on delivery drivers on partner restaurants. The delivery partners would not even be informed that the delivery has to be completed within 10 minutes so all pressure is alleviated from them. They also said that Zomato Instant will only be available depending on the user’s location and only a few food items which are already prepared or take very less time to prepare will be available to order with this service making it niche and easy for the restaurant partners and the delivery drivers. The company could not stress enough that the full logistical pressure falls on Zomato.
However, many people are still sceptical of this and feel drivers might be penalised if there is any delay which could be very unfair for them. However, we still don’t know if this feature would even be possible in a pan India scale and we will have to wait and see if this feature will even be allowed to be introduced.
