Zomato Launches New Platform To Help Restaurants In Hiring, Licensing

Continuing its portfolio expansion spree, foodtech major Zomato has rolled out restaurant services hub, an initiative to cater to restaurants.

The new platform will help restaurants plug in various operational requirements like hiring, FSSAI registrations, taxation and trademarking. It can be accessed through Zomato’s restaurant partner app, website or dining app. 

The company had been piloting the service for the past six months and claims to have already helped service over 3,200 restaurant partners, which include Havmor, Dastaan-e-Dawat, Berry on Top, Nutri Bar and Cheelizza among others.

It plans on adding multiple services like point of sales integrations and hygiene audits in the near future. 

For hiring, it has partnered with vendors Apna, WorkIndia, Shiftz, Rozgaar Inc and Kaam.com. The hiring services would cost restaurants in a range between INR 299-5,250. 

For FSSAI registrations, trademark security and GST registrations, it has partnered with vendors like SRV Taxcon, GoAuditz, Plans4U, among others. 

“The restaurant services hub platform is only a step towards our vision of creating a full-stack solution for any restaurant owner looking to set up shop or scale their existing business,” Zomato food delivery’s CEO Rakesh Ranjan said in a statement.

This comes a week after Swiggy, the company’s primary rival in the foodtech space, also rolled out a restaurant partner focused service. On June 20, Swiggy launched a recruitment support initiative to assist restaurant partners with staff recruitment. It partnered with Apna, WorkIndia, Kaam and Shiftz for the initiative, which is available on the Swiggy Partner App. 

The startups’ restaurant partner focused initiatives come at a time when their battle to achieve dominance in Indian foodtech is heating up. While they compete across services like quick commerce and live events, Zomato has an advantage over Swiggy in the food delivery space as of now. 

On June 25, brokerage firm Goldman Sachs pegged Zomato’s share in the food delivery market to be around 56-57%. Taking Swiggy’s 2023 results as a base, the brokerage said Zomato’s gross order value (GOV) in 2023 was about 30-35% higher than Swiggy’s. It added that Zomato was well poised to gain further market share on the back of improving profitability.

The listed company’s latest experiment comes at a time when it has been aggressively expanding its services. It has recently introduced a large order fleet, last mile deliveries for office goers, priority deliveries in a pilot phase, and Zomato Everyday.

Besides its bread and butter food delivery business and crown jewel Blinkit, the company is now turning its purview towards its events business.

On June 16, it intimated the bourses that it is in discussion with fintech major Paytm to acquire its events and movie ticketing business, Paytm Insider for an estimated INR 1,500 Cr. If materialised, the deal could catapult Zomato to second position in the events and movie ticketing space, behind only BookMyShow, brokerage JM Financial ascertained. 

Shares of Zomato ended today’s trading session 1.44% higher at INR 200.15.