Zomato enters 15 minutes delivery battle, app shows new tab for customers

Online food aggregator platform Zomato has forayed into the quick delivery space by making a new 15 minutes delivery option available to customers on its app. The ‘15 mins delivery’ tab shows up on the Zomato app's Explore section and providers customers a list of food options that can be delivered in that time.

At present, the quick 15 minutes delivery option is not applicable on all orders. As seen at the time of writing, all the restaurants available to order from in the 15 minutes delivery section are within 1.5 km distance from the delivery spot. It is also not clear if the 15-minute option has been rolled out across the country.

Quick Delivery Race Tightens

The move comes a month after rival Swiggy launched 10-minute food delivery app ‘Bolt’ and said it would expand the business to key markets in tier 2 and tier 3 cities and towns.

The Bolt business allows users to order food in 10 minutes from popular restaurants and QSRs (quick-service restaurants), Swiggy said in an official statement. It initially launched the service in six cities — Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune.

In December the company's own grocery arm, Blinkit, launched its new food delivery app called Bistro, close on the heels of the official app launch of competitor Zepto Cafe app. While both Bistro and Zepto Cafe aim to deliver snacks, meals and beverages in just 10 minutes, the former has gone the cloud kitchen route while Zepto is looking to open physical restaurants.

‘Second’ Time Lucky?

Notably, while Bistro is Blinkit's first attempt, it is parent Zomato's second try at 10-minute food delivery after Zomato Instant. Overall, it means that Zomato has entered, exited and re-entered the space a few times.

In 2022 amid customer backlash, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal sought to reassure that ‘Instant’ as the 10-minute delivery service was then called, “will be for specific nearby locations, popular and standardised items only”.

Since there was no official announcement regarding the new 15 minute delivery option, it remains to be seen if the venture is a reboot of Instant or a revamped plan.