Zomato sees an opportunity in catering business

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Zomato plans to diversify into the catering business by leveraging its established network of restaurant partners as part of a broader strategy to service large orders, said a senior executive at the food delivery platform.

The company is also looking to add more offerings to its loyalty programme, Gold, despite concerns about the potential impact on profitability, Rakesh Ranjan, chief executive for food delivery, said in an interview.

Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill Courses

“If I want to have a gathering of 20 people at home…right now food delivery does not lend itself well into that kind of a use case. It's winter, I want to have a party, or I want to do a small picnic in the local park. There are tons of such use cases in the offline world. But the food delivery does not lend itself into it very well. It's only about tying some of those loose threads…so that's what we're going to be focusing on,” he said.

This June, Zomato introduced the multi-cart feature allowing users to order from multiple restaurants at the same time.

This rolls up into the Gurugram-based company’s broader strategy to introduce more use cases for food delivery in an effort to grow its total addressable market. Ranjan said Zomato is seeking to build “occasions” for customers to order more by initiating operational changes and through marketing campaigns.

“That's one clear vector that we are going to be working on. We believe that occasional orderers, low frequency orderers, if they're able to associate more occasions with