Zomato will not launch private labels and Blinkit’s quick food delivery platform, Bistro, operates independently without using any data from its Gurugram-based parent, Blinkit CEO Albinder Dhindsa clarified on Friday.
The statement comes a day after the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) announced plans to take legal action against platforms like Zomato for allegedly engaging in private labelling of food items and selling them through quick delivery applications.
Sagar Daryani, president of NRAI, said that Zomato and Swiggy have all the data of the restaurants, which they do not share with the association.
“For us, there is complete consumer masking. We have no reason to not believe them migrating our customers to the products they sell as private labels on their apps,” Daryani said.
Responding to these allegations, Dhindsa, in a post on social media platform X, reiterated that Zomato will never launch private brands to compete with its restaurant partners.
“This is why this service is not being built within Zomato (the organisation which runs the brand or the app),” he explained. “This is a standalone team with a standalone app—and no Zomato restaurant data has been used. We will not even use the Zomato app to market Bistro.”
He added that the new initiative will have a “significant additional cost” for the company “but ethics and sticking to our word mean more than anything else to us at Zomato and we are not going to give it up to save some marketing cost”.
Dhindsa also officially announced the launch of Bistro, Blinkit’s standalone quick food delivery app. He highlighted that the food delivered through Bistro would be free from preservatives and processed ingredients.
The company is investing heavily in infrastructure and research and development to create dishes within five minutes or less.
“We have partnered with a number of companies innovating in the food industry to make this happen and will continue to support the ecosystem,” he added.
FE had earlier reported that Blinkit is running pilot tests for Bistro in parts of Gurugram.