Food delivery behemoth, Zomato, is experimenting with a priority delivery feature that levies additional charges for expedited delivery in select locations.
What Happened: According to a report by Moneycontrol, Zomato is currently testing this feature in specific locations in cities such as Bengaluru and Mumbai. This feature provides customers with the option to shell out an extra fee for faster delivery times. For instance, a Bengaluru user was offered the opportunity to pay an additional ₹29 for an order to be delivered within 16-21 minutes, instead of the usual 21 minutes.
The feature is presently not available in other cities like Delhi-NCR and Kolkata, suggesting a phased rollout. The extra fee is also applicable to Zomato Gold subscribers. The company has not yet made any official statement regarding this development.
Zomato’s decision to test a priority delivery feature comes on the heels of the company’s recent move to increase its platform fee to ₹5 per order. This fee hike, which affects major markets like the National Capital Region, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Lucknow, could potentially boost the company’s quarterly earnings, considering Zomato processes 2.0-2.2 million orders daily.
The company had previously raised the platform fee to ₹4 on January 1, following an earlier increase from ₹2 to ₹3. The platform fee is charged in addition to delivery charges, which are waived for Zomato Gold members, although they still pay the platform fee while enjoying other benefits like discounts and free delivery.
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