Swiggy understood us but inclusion of Zomato Gold in delivery unacceptable: NRAI

After several rounds of meetings, looks like food delivery companies have finally budged into the demands of the restaurant owners.

Senior officials of both foodtech majors Zomato and Swiggy met representatives of National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) on August 29 to resume the discussions regarding alleged uneven contract terms and deep discounts imposed by the delivery companies on restaurant operators.

As per the press release issued by NRAI, both Swiggy and Zomato concluded on the issues of deep discounting, high and uneven commission charges, data masking and mandatory bundling of services( fleet delivery, marketing etc) and reached to an 'in-principle agreement' to resolve these issues within a specified timeline.

All the parties are slated to meet again in the second week of September to update on the issue and reach a concrete agreement.

The statement also highlighted that Swiggy's constructive approach claiming that the  Naspers-backed company understood the meeting's viewpoints and promised to revert with an actionable plan in the next meeting.

On the other hand, Zomato disclosed their intentions to introduce their offering of Zomato Gold on delivery services as well. NRAI expressed their protest on the same, sticking to their concern regarding deep discounting of dine-in as well as delivery services.

Zomato will examine the issues discussed at their end and will reply in the follow-up meeting.

NRAI had issued letters to online food delivery aggregators highlighting eight critical issues pertaining to the food delivery space and urged them to create more transparent and fair terms of engagement for partner restaurants.

Restaurant owners were up in arms with the online food aggregators accusing them of unfair trade practices and predatory pricing, alleging that food aggregators have disconnected restaurants from its customer base by masking customer data and were leveraging their presence online to secure one-sided contracts with the restaurants.

They were protesting by logging out of these online apps and stopped processing online orders for aggregators, with reports pegging that nearly 2500-3000 restaurants already have logged out of these applications. NRAI, which represents 500,000 restaurants in the country, had jointly participated in the logout movement and threatened to do the same in other cities including Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru and Mumbai.

Note: The article was updated after receiving the press release from NRAI.