Zomato is rebranding its 10-minute food delivery service by adding a new menu with its partners, the food aggregator said in a statement Tuesday. The development comes a day after reports claimed the food aggregator decided to shut down its 10-minute food delivery business due to lack of profitability.
“Instant is not shutting down. We are working on a new menu with our partners and rebranding the business. All finishing stations remain intact and no one is affected by this decision,” a Zomato spokesperson said.
The company reportedly decided to shut down the food delivery service in 10 minutes after it failed to attract the profitability the company had hoped since its launch. The company is now planning to move to a new product, according to reports.
Zomato Instant was launched in March last year at four stations in Gurugram, which is the company’s headquarters, and at one station in Bangalore. Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Zomato, said in a blog post: “Until now, no one in the world has delivered hot, fresh food in less than 10 minutes at scale, and we couldn’t wait to be the first to create this category at scale! world level!”
According to the company, the service was offered through the company’s finishing stations that housed the best-selling items, which comprised 20 to 30 restaurant dishes depending on demand predictability and hyper-local preferences.
The development comes amid several high-profile departures at the company in the past year. Earlier this month, Gunjan Patidar, Zomato’s co-founder and CTO, parted ways with the organization. The company, however, did not reveal the reasons for his resignation. Last year, the company’s co-founder Gaurav Gupta, Siddharth Jhawar, former vice president and head of Intercity, and Rahul Ganjoo, head of new initiatives, also resigned from the company.
On Monday, Goyal said the food ordering firm has about 800 open positions in five roles. Job openings range from Chief of Staff to Managing Director. “As the chief of staff to one of our CEOs (Zomato, Blinkit, Hyperpure), you will be nothing less than a force multiplier and mini-CEO for the organization. You will drive priorities across the organization to influence results and keep the momentum going.” says the ad. He further adds that this is “a 24/7 job where the traditional employee mindset of work/life balance won’t work.”
The other four roles include generalists, product managers, growth managers, and software development engineers.
The Gurugram-based online food aggregator in November 2022 had announced performance-based turnover of less than 3% of its workforce. In May 2020, the company laid off 520 employees or 13% of its workforce. For the July-September quarter of last year, the company’s revenue rose 62.2% YoY to ₹1,661 crore from ₹1,024 crore in the same period of 2021.
Zomato share price was trading 0.88% higher at ₹51.45 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Tuesday.