The war between online food delivery apps and the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) is expected to get over soon as Zomato and Swiggy have agreed to make some changes to their commissions for eateries. The delivery apps have also agreed to modify the way they run discounts and even standardise some terms and conditions for on-boarding restaurants to bring more uniformity to their platform. The development has come after rounds of meetings between two parties in Mumbai on Thursday.
It is to be noted that restaurants have been protesting against deep discounts provided by online food apps. They have argued that the model on which these apps are running is hurting their business and unsustainable in the long term.
Earlier this month, More than 300 famous restaurant brands in the millennium city of Gurgram broke their association with aggregators and table reservation services including Zomato, EazyDiner, Nearbuy, MagicPin and Gourmet Passport.
On Thursday, top executives from online food delivery companies Swiggy and Zomato met with executives from NRAI. As per a report in financial daily, Mint, the two sides discussed a series of issues raised by restaurants including deep discounts, uneven commission charges, private labels run by aggregators, forced fleet services, and uneven terms and conditions used by food delivery platforms to monitor and on-board eateries.
Anurag Katriar, head of NRAI's Mumbai Chapter said that the two major companies Zomato and Swiggy have agreed to consider the issues raised by the restaurants. "The meetings were positive and we made some progress," he added. He further went on to add, "They both (Zomato and Swiggy) agreed deep discounting cannot go on, it can be episodic. We also expressed that they need to bear the cost of discounts partially, if not fully, which they agreed to."
Arguing that Swiggy is ready to mend tied with its partners, a Swiggy spokesperson said "Swiggy and the NRAI are committed to creating value for both restaurants and consumers in a sustainable manner. We have had a constructive and collaborative dialogue today and have agreed to reconvene on all the points that were discussed. Our goal remains to enable a win-win for our small, medium and large restaurant partners and the food delivery ecosystem." It is expected that two parties will have rounds of discussion in future as the aggregators are likely to share a formal proposal with NRAI within a week or two.
