Zomato Launches Ticket Reselling Feature

In lead-up to going live with its ticketing app ‘District’, foodtech major Zomato has announced the launch of a new ‘Book Now, Sell Anytime’ feature. It  will go live on its app from September 30, starting with the “Zomato Feeding India Concert”.

With the feature, customers who have bought tickets to a live event on the Zomato app can list their ticket on the app for a price lower or higher than their original purchase price. 

Under this feature, Zomato has capped the purchase limit to 10 tickets per customer and the resale price of 2x of the current phase price on the Zomato app. Further, if the tickets for the event are sold out, the cap will be 2x the final phase price.

Giving an example, the company said that if a customer purchased an early bid ticket for INR 1,000, they can resell the ticket for up to INR 4,000 against a live price of INR 2,000. 

“Our hope is that this feature is utilised for the right reasons by our genuine customers. We also want to ensure this does not promote ill practices in the events industry such as black market touting or unfair pricing,” Zomato said. 

It further said that it will continue to grow and evolve the initiative moving forward. “This is surely not how this feature will look in a few months/years from now, so it is important for the industry to talk to us with the spirit of “we are all part of the same team,” the company added. 

The announcement aligns with Zomato announcing the pre-sale for its annual Zomato Feeding India Concert, which is scheduled to be headlined by American music artist Dua Lipa on November 30 in Mumbai. 

In a tweet, Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal claimed that the company has seen 300k registration on the “notify me when tickets open up” for the Zomato Feeding India Concert. 

Earlier today, the company took the pre-sale for the concert live for HSBC card holders. “…We’ve now got you covered in case your plans change after purchasing the tickets. Customers can now sell their purchased tickets anytime on the Zomato app! We’ve introduced a first-of-its-kind, ‘Book Now, Sell Anytime’ feature in India to enhance customer experience and support the live ticketing industry,” Goyal posted on X. 

However, not everyone was enthused with the launch of the new feature. Many social media users said that the company will be promoting black marketing of tickets via the new feature. 

“Black market in ticket days are back! The same platforms bringing it back which destroyed them,” an X user said in a response to Goyal’s post.

Zomato’s reselling feature will come in the run up to the announcement of Zomato’s District. About a week ago, the foodtech major announced the acquisition of the movie and events ticketing business of Paytm for INR 2,048 Cr in an all-cash deal. The deal is expected to close within the current quarter (Q2 FY25) subject to the “satisfactory completion of all closing conditions”.

The startup’s intent behind the acquisition is to make deeper inroads into the growing going-out experiences market. While making the announcement, Goyal said that Zomato’s aim is to build products and services to cater to the changing lifestyle of Indians, and the acquisition would make the company more relevant for the customers.

Share prices of Zomato at 3:32 PM today were INR 255.90, 1.35% lower than previous close.