Zomato rolls out in 100 cities over 2 months, reaches 300 milestone

Online platform Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd on Monday said it has expanded its food-delivery service to over 300 cities, adding 100 regions in just two months of crossing the 200-city milestone in April.

On average, Zomato is bringing 45-50 restaurants into its fold in each city and launching delivery in more than one city every day, the firm said in a statement.

Bhuj and Junagadh in Gujarat, Rishikesh in Uttarakhand, Shimla in Himachal Pradesh and Mussoorie in Uttarakhand, figure among a few of the 100 cities Zomato has recently added to its list of delivery points. Others include Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu, Ayodhya and Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh, Begusarai in Bihar, and Jalna and Parbhani in Maharashtra. 

Zomato said that it is committed to bolstering its presence in Northeast India. Earlier, the restaurant delivery platform was present in only two cities of the Northeast — Guwahati and Nagaon. It has now launched services in Silchar and Dibrugarh in Assam and Agartala in Tripura.  

The food delivery aggregator said that it takes three factors into consideration when introducing its services in cities. One, the city/town in question should have over 100,000 inhabitants. Two, a huge number of students offsets the disadvantage of a city being small. A considerable presence of students, such as in Kharagpur, which houses an Indian Institute of Technology campus, encourages Zomato to pilot its services. The third and final factory is supply. Zomato said there should be enough restaurants to bear the brunt of a sudden spike in demand.

“As we expand, we are also focusing on improving our average delivery time, which now stands at 30.5 minutes,” said Mohit Gupta, CEO, food delivery, Zomato.

In the process of expanding its footprint in new cities, Zomato has allowed partners who own bicycles to execute delivery operations. Zomato said it is working on the introduction of e-cycles.

Recent Zomato news:

• April 2019: Zomato launched a multi-product warehouse in Delhi under HyperPure, its supplies brand for partner restaurants. 
• March 2019: Zomato received a significant valuation from HSBC Global Research. 
• March 2019: Zomato launched food-supplies warehouses for B2B entities in nine cities.
• October 2018: Zomato introduced self-pickup service in 13 cities in a bid to rationalise costs.