Swiggy, Zomato Raise Platform Fees By 20% In Key Markets

Foodtech companies Swiggy and Zomato have reportedly hiked the platform fee to INR 6 per order in its key markets, including Delhi and Bengaluru.

ET reported the development first.

The move could be seen as an essential to these foodtech players as they look to improve their take rates. Both Swiggy and Zomato have been experimenting with platform fees to boost their overall revenues and profits.

The platform fee was first introduced by Zomato in its portal with INR 2 per order initially. This was followed by Swiggy, called ‘collection fee’.

Shares of Zomato Ltd are up over 2% at INR 226.97 in the early hours of trading on Monday (July 15).

Zomato has hiked its platform fee twice this year. It first increased the charges to INR 4 per order across key markets on New Year. Then, it hiked the same by 25% to INR 5 per order across its key markets in April.

Meanwhile, Swiggy was caught under speculation that it could possibly double its platform fee on food orders from INR 5 to INR 10 in the coming months to offset losses ahead of its planned initial public offering (IPO), which was denied by the company.

The latest price hike was flagged by a user on reddit, two days ago.

Swiggy has now introduced the new hike to appear as a discount from INR 7 to INR 6 in the checkout page.

Platform fee is a compulsory charge a customer has to pay apart from the GST and restaurant fee, even if the user subscribes to Zomato Gold or Swiggy One. The subscription provides the advantage of eliminating delivery charges imposed on the bill.

This hike comes after Zomato introduced a feature update on its platform tol now allow customers to remove their past orders from the app’s history, which was informed through a tweet by CEO Deepinder Goyal last week.