Zomato Unveils Multi-Restaurant Cart Feature

Food delivery platform Zomato has brought a major change in its latest app update which allows users to make multiple carts at the same time. Earlier, users could add items from only one restaurant at a time.

With this latest app update, Zomato users can now build carts from up to four restaurants.Users can come back and complete orders from the remaining carts after checking out from one cart.

Currently, this feature is not available on Zomato’s archrival Swiggy. However, some other apps such as PhonePe’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) dedicated app, Pincode, offers this feature. Besides, cloud kitchen unicorn Rebel Foods’ Eatsure also allows this multiple cart feature.

It is pertinent to note that the move comes at a time when Zomato saw its gross order value of its food delivery business shrink about 1% to INR 6,569 Cr in the March quarter due to an industry-wide slowdown and its exit from 225 cities in the previous quarter.

According to a HSBC report, Zomato’s market share stood at 55% for the January-June 2022 period, with the rest being held by Swiggy. For the December 2022 quarter, the share mix changed to 54% for Zomato and 46% for Swiggy, which shows Zomato was losing market share to its rival.

However, the report added that Zomato started reclaiming its market share from Swiggy since the relaunch of its loyalty programme, Zomato Gold, in January. HSBC projected that the foodtech giant will clinch a 57% market share in FY24.

On the other hand, ONDC’s food delivery segment has also posed threats to Zomato and Swiggy. Inc42 reported earlier how food items were available at a significantly lower price on ONDC compared to Zomato and Swiggy, which charge a commission between 18%-24% from partner restaurants. However, a part of the industry thinks the original impact of ONDC will only be seen when it stops offering discounts.

Zomato’s net loss narrowed 48% year-on-year (YoY) to INR 187.6 Cr in the March quarter of the financial year 2022-23 (FY23). The Deepinder Goyal-led startup had reported a net loss of INR 359.7 Cr in Q4 FY22.

It posted an operating revenue of INR 2,056 Cr, which jumped over 70% from INR 1,211.8 Cr reported in the last year’s quarter.