Facebook-owned Instagram on Thursday announced its partnership with online food delivery platforms Swiggy and Zomato to support small businesses in India during the Covid-19 crisis.

The photo-messaging app also announced the rollout of the food order sticker in India that will help businesses from the food industry stay in touch with their customers and allow customers to support their favourite businesses too.

Businesses can now share Instagram's new food order sticker on their Stories, and people can tap to place their order through the Swiggy and Zomato website.

"We're rolling out the food order sticker which will aid order discovery and spur engagement, and we're glad to have partnered with Swiggy and Zomato for the same," Nitin Chopra, Industry Head – E-commerce and Retail, Facebook India, said in a statement.

"We'll continue to work on features that make it easier to support the small businesses you care about," Chopra added.

To use the sticker, the businesses should have the latest version of the app and use an Instagram business or creator account and they can add one of our partner's links (Zomato or Swiggy) for food orders to their Instagram profile.

The restaurants can then share these links to their followers by using the ‘Food Order' sticker in 'Stories', or share on their Instagram Profile with the "Order Food" button.

For consumers, when people see options for food orders, they can tap to make the purchase through Zomato or Swiggy's site.

"Instagram's food order sticker will not just help restaurants introduce themselves to more customers, improve their engagement but also add a new growth avenue for their business," said Sandeep Anand, CMO - Growth Marketing, Zomato.