SUMMARY
FSSAI had began reviewing the online food delivery platform from October 1st week
Nearly 10 major foodtech players have removed restaurants without FSSAI license from their platform
FSSAI is conducting an audit on online food delivery players in line of series of complaints
The results of the review conducted by Indian food safety regulator, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), showed that nearly 5K restaurants have been delisted by 10 online food delivery platforms including Zomato, Swiggy, UberEats, FoodPanda among others, as they did not possess the FSSAI license.
This development has come in after the FSSAI asked the online food delivery platforms to remove those food business operators (FBOs) that didn’t have a license obtained from the regulator.
The order was made in line of a series of complaints it received related to sub-standard food being supplied by food businesses listed on the major food delivery platforms.
The regulator body had announced that it had began reviewing the progress of the platforms on its order from October first week.
The FSSAI had originally set a deadline of July 31 for these platforms to delist non-licensed partner restaurant from their platforms.
However, in August, the FSSAI said that about 40% of the restaurants listed on online food delivery platforms such as UberEats, Zomato, and Swiggy had failed to meet the set deadline to obtain the license form the regulator.
Earlier in September, foodtech unicorn Zomato had announced that it has joined hands with the FSSAI to take strict action in the interest of public health and had already made plans to delist those food operators that didn’t have a license.
Interestingly however, the bulk removal of restaurants from the platform has not affected the numbers of monthly food delivery by the platforms as recently Zomato had recently announced that it received 21 Mn monthly online food orders in India, and nearly 2 Mn orders over the phone.
Further according to a 2018 RedSeer Consulting report, the number of daily orders from online food delivery platforms reported a 15% growth on a quarterly basis from January to September 2017.
With more and more foodtech startups entering into space, it becomes important to take care of its hygiene conditions as well. That the major players in this space such as Zomato, Swiggy, UberEats and others taking up the issue seriously and have delisted the partners without the license shows its intentions to make a presence in the country honestly and its focus on its consumers.
[The development was reported by Livemint]
Update 1, October 11 at 9:56
earlier the story mentioned the number of delisted restaurants as 10.5K basis ET story. However, now the ET story has been updated to 5K restaurants. The story has been thus updated accordingly.
