Zomato CEO says 10-minute food delivery will soon be a reality: Here's how

'Nobody in the world has so far delivered hot and fresh food in under 10 minutes at scale, and we were eager to be the first to create this category, globally,' says Deepinder Goyal

Online food aggregator Zomato on Monday said it plans to deliver food to its customers in 10 minutes, a model being followed by the quick delivery grocery companies, its founder and CEO, Deepinder Goyal, said in a blog post. This, while ensure delivery partner's safety.

"I started feeling that the 30-minute average delivery time by Zomato is too slow, and will soon have to become obsolete. If we don’t make it obsolete, someone else will," Goyal said.

"Innovating and leading from the front is the only way to survive (and therefore thrive) in the tech industry. And here we are… with our 10-minute food delivery offering – Zomato Instant," he added.

In his post, Deepinder said the fulfilment of the quick delivery promise relies on a dense finishing stations’ network, which will be located in close proximity to high-demand customer neighbourhoods.

"Nobody in the world has so far delivered hot and fresh food in under 10 minutes at scale, and we were eager to be the first to create this category, globally," he said.

The company will depend heavily on dish-level demand prediction algorithms and in-station robotics to ensure that the food is sterile, fresh and hot at the time it is picked by the delivery partner.

Zomato plans to house bestseller items - some 20-30 dishes across its finishing stations from the partner restaurants and it also says that in the 10-minutes model, prices of the items will be reduced but absolute income for restaurant partners as well as our delivery partners, will remain the same

"Due to demand predictability at a hyperlocal level, we expect that the price for the customer will get significantly reduced, while the absolute ₹ margin/income for our restaurant partners as well as our delivery partners, will remain the same," Goyal said.

This initiative will be called Zomato Instant and will start a pilot with four stations in Gurugram from April.

"We deeply care about how we do what we do. So the first thing we told ourselves when we thought about instant food delivery was “no compromises”. We narrowed down to these eight principles around which we are building Zomato Instant," added Goyal.

* (Almost) as affordable as home-cooked food

* Highest quality of fresh food

* World class hygiene practices

* Minimal use of plastic packaging

* Convenient packaging for quick/easy consumption

* Traceable supply chain

* Delivery partner safety

Zomato recently said its board has approved a loan of up to $150 million (about Rs 1,145 crore) to digital grocery shopping player Grofers India Pvt Ltd (GIPL).