The Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) plans to raise concerns with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry regarding standalone quick food delivery apps launched by Swiggy and Zomato. The association has accused these food aggregator platforms of exploiting their dominant market positions and restaurant data to promote their private labels, such as Blinkit’s Bistro and Swiggy’s Snacc.
The NRAI has declared its plan to approach the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to address concerns over these practices.
Albinder Dhindsa, CEO of Zomato’s quick-commerce platform Blinkit, refuted the allegations, asserting that the company operates fairly and does not engage in anti-competitive behavior.
Representing a vast network of 60,000 hotels and 5 lakh restaurants nationwide, FHRAI contends that such practices violate Section 3 of the Competition Act, 2002, which prohibits anti-competitive agreements that harm competition, lead to market foreclosure, or enable the creation of a dominant position.
In a post on the social media platform X, Dhindsa said, “Zomato will never launch private brands on the Zomato app to compete with its restaurant partners. This still holds true. Which is why this service is not being built within Zomato (the organisation which runs the brand, or the app). 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.”
“This is going to be a significant additional cost to us, 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. All the companies innovating with us on Bistro also work with a number of restaurants and our success at Bistro has the potential to add value for the entire food & restaurant ecosystem,” Dhindsa added.
The move highlights growing tensions between restaurant operators and food delivery platforms over market fairness and competitive practices.
