SUMMARY
Zomato Increased Its Delivery Executive Fleet Strength From 2,200 In February To 40k In June This Year
Foodtech unicorn Zomato has added a new feature on its app that allows customers to give a ‘tip’ to the delivery executive. Although it’s not mandatory, customers may choose to add a tip fixed between INR 5-50 as a gesture to their service. The feature comes along with a short bio of the executive like education, hometown, languages they speak, their aspirations, etc.
This is perhaps for the first time the ‘tip’ feature has been introduced in the on-demand online foodtech space of India. Cab aggregator Uber added the tip feature for their drivers earlier in 2017.
On the initiative, Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO of Zomato, said, “There is a story behind every delivery executive that comes to deliver food to us. They aren’t just a dot on a map that you can track. Tipping is a way to thank delivery executives for going an extra mile and providing a great experience.”
Zomato maintains that all delivery executives in its company have their own bikes. While some are students completing their graduation others have been in the delivery vertical for years — working either full-time or part-time. It has updated its tip feature at the final stage of placing an order in the application.
The move, which Zomato expedited about a month back, has received mixed responses from its users. One of the Twitterati posted, “a few delivery boys say that the tip does not reach them. Cn u address?”
Another Twitterati posts —
Issuing a statement today, Zomato clarified that the tip to the order is directly transferred to the delivery executive without any deductions by Zomato. Zomato Zead, Mohit Kumar, added that the feature is an initiative aimed to support, empower, and appreciate the job of delivery executives.
In September 2017, Goyal confirmed the acquisition of Bengaluru-based hyperlocal logistics platform Runnr by Zomato. With the acquisition, Zomato maintains to have upped its fleet strength from 2,200 in February 2018 to 40K in June 2018.
Zomato launched its online foodtech platform in May 2015. The unicorn completed a whopping 5.5 Mn monthly food orders in March 2018 and currently, it delivers over 10.5 Mn orders a month. The company recorded $11 Mn operating burn in FY18. It caters its food delivery service across 17 cities in India. It competes with Swiggy, another foodtech unicorn on the fray who may also explore ways, if not ‘tipping’ feature but various other ways, to keep their food delivery executives happy.
