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Indian Restaurants Complain About ‘Anti-Competitive’ Food Apps

By  |  March 2, 2020

After the “Logout” movement by restaurants against heavily discounted dine-in programmes offered by food aggregators, the national restaurant association (NRAI) on Monday, March 2, sent notices to online delivery aggregators, flagging “serious concerns” over alleged “lack of transparency, deep discounting and abuse of dominant position by the online delivery aggregators.” The NRAI has sent letters to Swiggy, Zomato, Uber Eats, and Foodpanda on the same, stating that the delivery business model of deep discounting and data masking is hurting thousands of mid-sized and even large restaurant chains.

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    NRAI Mumbai chapter head Anurag Katriar said the association has written official letters strongly raising the prevailing concerns to the online 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,” Katriar said in a statement.

    He said all standalone and chain restaurateurs across India have displayed “strong resentment on deep discounting, data masking, high and uneven commission charges by online food aggregators”. Compared to dine-in programs, the online delivery model is huge. According to industry estimates, while Swiggy does about 1.2 million orders a day across 300 cities, Zomato delivers approximately 1 million daily orders across 500 cities.

    “We are not against the technology platforms, but our concerns are largely around these aggregators misusing their dominant position to indulge in predatory behaviour,” Katriar said.

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