Mumbai: The online food delivery space promises to heat up in the coming days with food aggregator and delivery platform Zomato planning to go the quick-commerce way. Zomato co-founder Deepinder Goyal on Tuesday announced a ‘10-minute food delivery’ service with 'Zomato Instant.'

Claiming to be the first to create this category globally of “delivering hot and fresh food in under 10 minutes at scale,” Goyal emphasised that “Innovating and leading from the front is the only way to survive (and therefore thrive) in the tech industry.”

Announcement: 10 minute food delivery is coming soon on Zomato.

Food quality – 10/10
Delivery partner safety – 10/10
Delivery time – 10 minutes

Here’s how Zomato Instant will achieve the impossible while ensuring delivery partner safety – https://t.co/oKs3UylPHh pic.twitter.com/JYCNFgMRQz

— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) March 21, 2022

The food-tech platform plans to launch ‘Zomato Instant’ first in Gurugram April onwards with four stations. 

Going into the nitty-gritty's of how the food-tech plans to achieve the seemingly impossible while ensuring delivery partner safety and without compromising on the food quality, Goyal explained further in his blog. 

The fulfilment of its quick delivery promise relies on a dense finishing stations’ network, which is located near high-demand customer neighbourhoods, according to Zomato. Sophisticated dish-level demand prediction algorithms, and future-ready in-station robotics will be employed to ensure that the food is sterile, fresh and hot at the time it is picked by the delivery partner, asserted Goyal in his blog. 

On why the food-tech felt the need to get into quick commerce with food, Goyal further enlightened that it was the need of the hour as he started to feel the 30-minute average delivery time by Zomato is “too slow,” and will soon have to become obsolete. Customers are increasingly demanding quicker answers to their needs- They don’t want to plan, and they don’t want to wait, he wrote. Sorting restaurants by fastest delivery time is one of the most used features on the Zomato app, Goyal shared.

The food aggregator will not penalise delivery partners for late deliveries and nor will the delivery partners be informed of the promised time of delivery, Goyal clarified. “Time optimisation does not happen on the road, and does not put any lives at risk.”

Earlier last week, Zomato invested in the quick commerce space by acquiring online grocery firm Blinkit, formerly Grofers for around $700 million.

In February, Zomato said it had set aside $400 million to invest in quick commerce stating that this category offers a “huge addressable market” and is synergistic with its food delivery business.