Less than year after launch, Zomato stops 10-minute delivery services

Zomato is rebranding its 10-min food delivery service by adding a new menu with its partners, the food aggregator said in a statement on Tuesday. The development comes a day after reports claimed the food aggregator has decided to shut its 10-min food delivery business, owing to lack of profitability. 

"Instant is not shutting down. We are working on a new menu with our partners and rebranding the business. All finishing stations remain intact, and no people are impacted by this decision," a Zomato spokesperson said.

According to reports, the company decided to draw curtains on the 10-min food delivery service after it failed to attract the profitability that the company was hoping for since its launch. The company is now planning to pivot into a new product, as per reports.  

Zomato Instant was launched in March last year across four stations in Gurugram, which is the company’s headquarters and at one station in Bengaluru. Deepinder Goyal, CEO, Zomato said in a blog post, “Nobody in the world has so far delivered hot and fresh food in under 10 minutes at scale, and we were eager to be the first to create this category, globally!”

According to the company, the service was offered through the company’s finish stations that housed bestseller items, comprising 20 to 30 dishes from restaurants based on demand predictability and hyperlocal preferences. 

The development comes amid several high-profile exits in the company in the past year. Earlier this month, Gunjan Patidar, Zomato’s co-founder and chief technology officer parted ways with the organisation. The company, however, did not disclose the reasons for his resignation. Last year, the company's co-founder Gaurav Gupta, Siddharth Jhawar, the ex-vice-president and head of Intercity, and Rahul Ganjoo, head of new initiatives also resigned from the company. 

On Monday, Goyal said the food ordering firm has about 800 positions open across five roles. The job vacancies include Chief of Staff to CEO. "As chief of staff to one of our CEOs (Zomato, Blinkit, Hyperpure), you will be nothing less than a force multiplier and mini-CEO for the organisation. You will drive priorities across the organisation to influence outcomes and maintain momentum," the advertisement reads. It further adds that this is "a 24x7 job where the traditional employee mindset of work-life balance won't work."

The other four roles include generalists, product managers, growth managers and software development engineers.

The Gurugram-based online food aggregator in November 2022 had announced a performance-based churn of under 3% of its workforce. In May 2020, the company laid off 520 employees or 13% of its workforce. For the July to September quarter last year, the company’s revenue surged 62.2% year-on-year (YoY) at ₹1,661 crore against ₹1,024 crore in the same period in 2021. 

The share price of Zomato was trading 0.88% higher at ₹51.45 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Tuesday.