A senior executive of Zomato said the practice of deep discounting, which has triggered a firestorm of protests by restaurants and led to several exiting food delivery app, is neither favourable and nor sustainable.“Deep discounting is neither favourable to anyone and nor is it sustainable,” Gaurav Gupta, co-founder of Zomato, India’s largest food aggregator.

More than 2,000 restaurants across India have departed from food aggregator platforms blaming their practice of predatory pricing and deep discounting in a “#Logout" movement led by the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI).Nearly 350 restaurants logged out of Zomato’s Gold programme alone in the past week.

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Zomato, which gets around 10 percent of its revenue from its subscription service from Zomato Gold, is trying to find a solution, according to Gupta. “The discussion is around whether we are doing too much deep discounting to dine out. The focus is on creating programs that are unique and which act as triggers for users to eat out,” he said.

Gupta refused to quantify the hit the company saw owing to the ‘logout’ campaign.

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First Published:Aug 22, 2019 7:22 PM IST