Zomato has started its pilot of 10-minute food delivery with its employees in Gurugram, said people aware of the matter.

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The company had earlier said it will be delivering through ‘finishing stations’ which will be located in close proximity to high-demand customer neighbourhood. It is not clear as to how many of these stations are now operational.

However, a company spokesperson in an e-mailed response, said, “We are planning to launch a few stations in Gurugram in the next 30 days, and work towards improving our network based on our customers' feedback and demand. The finishing stations play a crucial role here specially in establishing shorter (less than 2 kms) and defined routes for our delivery partners. We plan to take Instant Live in other Indian cities soon.”

Read more: Zomato to junk eateries not adhering to food quality in clean-up drive

The food tech major plans to go live soon for its customers, but has not disclosed the exact timeline.

This comes at a time when 10-minute food delivery is seeing intensified competition as Swiggy, Ola is looking at this space. Further, Moneycontrol was the first to report today that Zepto has also forayed into food delivery and has started the services through an offering ‘Cafe’ on its app. The Y Combinator-backed company will be focusing on Tea, coffee, desserts and other ready-made items.

Zomato earlier had said that it will be able to deliver biryani, momos, bread omelette, poha, coffee, tea, and even instant noodles in ten minutes. Ola too is offering items such as pizza and rolls in 10 minutes in Bengaluru through its quick commerce service, Ola Dash.

The 10-minute food delivery strategy has received a lot of flak from the netizens and delivery partners. Earlier this month, the Chennai traffic police fined app-based delivery services a sum of Rs 1,35,400 after registering 978 cases against their delivery partners.

These companies include Zomato, Swiggy, Dunzo among others, according to data released by city traffic police. The police department said that food delivery services commit to deliver in a very short time, which is the primary reason why food delivery partners are forced to drive at a high speed.

Read more: Zomato delivery agent, who used bicycle in scorching heat, gets bike after Twitter fundraiser

(Edited by : Anand Singha)