Zomato is looking to try its hand at a brand new delivery segment starting today — affordable daily meals. The segment is not unheard of, nor is it new to India. Many startups have come up, raised enormous cash and shut down, trying to scale and sustain the ‘home-cooked’ afrodable meal delivery model. And while literally none of them were able to continue and most ultimately shut shop, Zomato is still looking to try its hand, perhaps banking on its already existing, deeply connected supply chain in the food delivery space.
Termed ‘Zomato Everyday’ and currently only available in select areas of Gurugram, the service basically serves quick to prepare, affordable daily meals through Zomato’s existing delivery service. The company says that its food partners collaborate with the “home-chefs” to design home-styled, wholesome food menus at the best prices within minutes.
While the company has not shared more details, it seems it will be trying a cloud-kitchen model for serving these daily meals. These meals are being prepared in small, no-frills, no dine-in, takeaway kitchens across cities, and are hence able to serve in hyperlocal model. Again, cloud kitchen models have been attempted before, in India as well as globally, but without much success. It will be interesting to see how Zomato scales this up, if it even does.
To order these meals, users can order through the usual Zomato app by browsing the menu, selecting a meal, customising it if need be, and order it. Meals start for as low as ₹89 ( ~US$1.1). Zomato has selected a bunch of home-chefs, who are designing the menus as well as selecting ingredients to be used in each of the meals.
Zomato Everyday is currently only available in select areas of Gurugram, and the company hasn’t talked about timelines of scaling this up.
