Zomato to soon deliver your food order in just 10-minutes

New Delhi: Zomato, one of the most popular food delivery applications in the country, has announced a 10-minute food delivery service called Instant which will take off at Gurgaon from April.

Claiming to be the first company to deliver food in just ten minutes, Zomato co-founder Deepinder Goyal announced the offering on Twitter.

He said, "10-minute food delivery is coming soon on Zomato". So far, we have seen 10-minute grocery delivery services from various tech platforms. This is the first time that a company has claimed to deliver food in just 10 minutes.

Mr Goyal also assured that the safety of its delivery agents will not be compromised.

"We do not put any pressure on delivery partners to deliver food faster. Nor do we penalise delivery partners for late deliveries. The delivery partners are not informed of the promised time of delivery. Time optimisation does not happen on the road and does not put any lives at risk," he said.

Zomato said the quick delivery will rely on a dense network of "finishing counters" which will be located in near high-demand customer neighbourhoods.

Social media, however, was perplexed as to how this could be achieved without pressurising delivery partners or how it was going to be logistically possible, given the dense traffic in the big cities of the country. They were also concerned about road safety hazards. With these primary gripes, social media users offered a range of criticism, some of which also included memes. MP Karti P Chidambaram strongly criticised Zomato's move.

Using "sophisticated dish-level demand prediction algorithms and future-ready in-stations robotics", the food delivery app said it will "ensure that your food is sterile, fresh and hot at the time it is picked by the delivery partner."

Explaining why it was getting into instant food delivery, Mr Goyal said, "Sorting restaurants by fastest delivery time is one of the most used features on the Zomato app."

He said he also "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," Mr Goyal said.