Zomato has delivered a total of 9.2 crore orders since March 23, 2020, and claims to have zero reported cases of COVID-19 transmission through food delivery, or through the food delivery agents, Zomato’s Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal announced in a tweet.
Zomato is one of India’s most valuable unicorns. “Food delivery is one of the safest recreational options available to our customers during the pandemic. Going forward, we anticipate the food delivery sector to continue to grow at 15 to 25 percent m-o-m for the foreseeable future,” he added.
With more premium restaurants now opening up to online delivery, a larger number of affluent consumers are embracing online ordering. Overall spends on such premium restaurants have grown by over 25 percent compared to pre-COVID-19 levels.
Customers are now relying on food delivery even more than usual when a city goes under a lockdown. Some cities such as Kolkata are seeing more customers ordering online when the city is (more or less) shut, but restaurants are open,” shared Deepinder in the blog.
Zomato announced that its food delivery business had recovered to 85 percent of pre-pandemic levels and that its food delivery segment recovered to (and even grown beyond) pre-COVID-19 levels in a number of large pockets of the country, led by some of the most affluent residential areas in the country.