Even as bitter battle ensues between restaurants and Zomato over its dine-in offering Gold and Infinity Dining, the National Restaurant Association of India has now written to food delivery apps over deep discounting and lack of transparency.
NRAI says that during the course of the ongoing #logout movement, it received complaints and concerns over the lack of transparency, deep discounting and abuse of dominant position by the online delivery aggregators.
It claims that this is impacting the growth, employment and sustainability of the thousands of small restaurants and start-ups in the country.
In its letter, which NRAI sent to Swiggy, Zomato, Uber Eats and Food Panda, it called on them to resolve the serious concerns raised by large standalone and chain restaurants, smaller players operating in micro-markets across India and the fast-growing cloud kitchen entities.
“All the standalone and chain restaurateurs across India have displayed their strong resentment on the prevailing concerns such as deep discounting, data masking, high & uneven commission charges by online food aggregators. There is a very strong demand to immediately extend the #Logout movement to the online delivery vertical as well. However, as a responsible Industry Body, we want to actively engage with these delivery aggregators to find a solution. We have written official letters strongly raising the prevailing concerns of the industry to all the four major online aggregators (Swiggy, Zomato, Uber Eats and Food Panda) to mutually resolve and build a vibrant, customer-friendly and sustainable food service industry,” Anurag Katriar, Head of NRAI Mumbai Chapter says.
However, Katriar, reiterates that they are not against the technology platforms, but that their concerns are largely around these aggregators misusing their dominant position to indulge in predatory behavior; commercially and in forming the terms of engagement.
Earlier this month, NRAI launched the Logout campaign against dine-in platforms over deep discounting. In response to his, Dineout, Eazydiner, Nearbuy and Magicpin agreed to rejig their product to eradicate the menace of deep discounting and are now working closely with NRAI to find a solution to resolve the problem at the earliest.