Zomato to stop grocery delivery service from September 17

NEW DELHI: Online food delivery platform Zomato has decided to stop its grocery delivery service from September 17 mainly on account of gaps in order fulfilment leading to poor customer experience, marking its exit from the segment for the second time since last year.

The company had entered the segment last year during the lockdown on account of the COVID-19 pandemic but exited the business on the recovery of its food delivery business.

The company also said that it believes that its investment in Grofers will generate better outcomes for its shareholders than in-house grocery efforts.

Zomato has invested USD 100 million (around Rs 745 crore) for acquiring a minority stake in grocery delivery platform Grofers.

In an email to its grocery partners, Zomato said, “At Zomato, we believe in delivering best in class services to our customers and largest growth opportunities to our merchant partners. We don’t believe that the current model is the best way to deliver these to our customers and merchant partners. Hence, we intend to stop our pilot grocery delivery service effective 17 September 2021.”

The email mentions that “store catalogues are very dynamic and inventory levels change frequently. This has led to gaps in order fulfilment, leading to poor customer experience.”

In the same time period, the express delivery model, with under 15-minute delivery promise and near-perfect fulfilment rates has been getting a lot of traction with customers and expanding rapidly, the company said in the email.

“We have realised that it is extremely difficult to pull off such a delivery promise with high fulfilment rates consistently, in a marketplace model (like ours),” it stated.