On Monday, food delivery service Zomato denied media claims that Instant, its 10-minute meal delivery service, was being shut down.
It was rumoured that Zomato is shuttering its 10-minute meal delivery service, “Zomato Instant,” less than a year after it launched in an effort to become profitable in the face of difficult market conditions.
“Instant is not shutting down. We are working on a new menu with our partners and rebranding the business. All finishing stations remain intact, and this decision impacts no one,” the company said.
“It didn’t look like it would turn profitable. The company is not getting the daily volume required to even pay the fixed costs. It wasn’t scaling up to that level,” a source quoted.
“The plan is to now pivot to a new product,” he said.
Combination meals, often known as thalis, are being tried out by Zomato. It is unclear if Zomato will continue to use the preposition “in 10 minutes” for this. The new offering, according to one of the sources, will, nevertheless, go on sale in 7–10 days.
Zomato made it clear that the service was not being shut down, just rebranded as Instant.
In March 2022, Zomato announced that it would provide 10-minute food delivery.
“Nobody in the world has so far delivered very hot and fresh food just in under 10 minutes at scale, and we were eager to be the first to create this category, global!” said CEO Deepinder Goyal in a blog post.
The service was offered via Zomato’s “finishing stations,” which kept 20–30 of the best-selling dishes from various restaurants on hand based on demand predictability and hyperlocal preferences. The business opened five of these stations, most of which were in the National Capital Region, and recently began offering the service in Bengaluru.
Rahul Ganjoo, the head of new ideas at Zomato, and chief executive Mohit Gupta recently parted ways. Siddharth Jhawar, who was vice president and in charge of Zomato’s Intercity Legends service, had also left the company in addition to Gupta and Ganjoo.
