None of us could have ever imagined or planned for the world we are living in today. The world has come to a halt, and unfortunately, the restaurant industry that we are in, is one of the worst hit. It is in times like these when we really need to rise to the occasion and support each other to the best of our abilities. 

At Zomato, we are doing everything we can to support our community – our customers, delivery partners, restaurant partners, and the daily wage workers who have been impacted the most in these times.

We have received an overwhelming support towards all the initiatives we have taken and we would like to thank everyone from the bottom of our heart for the courage and resilience they have shown to help out those in need. Your love and support keeps us going.

Here’s a summary of everything that we are doing to support our community, and our own business at this time – 

For our customers
Contactless Delivery – amidst the current lockdown situation in India, ensuring delivery of safe, hygienic food to our customers is paramount for us. To ensure this, we have launched contactless delivery. Customers can opt to allow the delivery partner to leave the package outside their home, ensuring no human-to-human interaction and hence lowering risk of any transmission.

Face masks – we believe that people should wear masks for the sake of others, if not for themselves. In that spirit, we have distributed and continue to distribute face masks to our delivery partners to keep them, as well as our customers, safe from the spread of an unlikely infection. We are also continuously educating our delivery partners on hygiene practices (not to touch face, nose, sneeze in elbow, etc.) to ensure their own as well as the ecosystem’s safety.

Disabling COD – for safety reasons, to avoid contact between our users and delivery partners, we’ve temporarily disabled the CoD (cash-on-delivery) option on our app.

• Strict hygiene standards at restaurants – we are making a big push to ensure hygiene standards are being followed by restaurants and passing on that information to users so that they can make an informed decision and are assured of the safety and hygiene standards of the food. 
• Restaurants can issue a self declaration on whether they are complying with best practices advised by WHO at their premises, to take precautions against the spread of Coronavirus.
• Restaurants have set up hand washing & sanitisation stations and are ensuring  that restaurant staff as well as delivery partners are using them regularly. 
• Restaurants are being encouraged to adopt the practice of sanitising their kitchen slabs and utensils at periodic intervals.
• Restaurants are also checking the body temperature of restaurant staff as well as our delivery partners to ensure that food is not delivered by someone with a higher than normal body temperature.
• Delivery partners are being asked to share a daily self declaration on their hygiene and health – normal body temperature, sanitised masks and bags. We are also enforcing policies to ensure adherence to hygiene and health standards.

Grocery delivery – we have started grocery delivery in 80+ cities across India to help with the supply of essentials. Our delivery network in the country is only second to India Post, and we are putting in every effort to make sure that we put it to good use to serve the community. We’d like to thank the government authorities, grocery stores, FMCG companies & other start-ups that have come forward to partner with us and support the community in this endeavour.

• Zomato Gold Extensions – as a small gesture from our end, we have decided to extend all paid Zomato Gold memberships by two months at zero cost. This will be valid across India, UAE, Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Lebanon, Turkey, New Zealand, Portugal and Qatar.

For our delivery partners

• Rider Relief Fund – we have donated money to and are raising funds from the community for the Zomato Rider Relief Fund. This fund is supporting all our delivery partners whose earnings have dropped sharply in the midst of reduced demand for food delivery.

• COVID Insurance – we have reassured our delivery partners that they don’t need to force themselves to work for financial reasons if they get infected with COVID-19. Zomato’s Delivery Partner Insurance Plan, which earlier covered only hospitalization, will now also cover lost earnings, in case the delivery partner gets infected by COVID-19. 

For our restaurant partners and restaurant workers

• Zomato Gold Support Fund – with the goal of helping out the restaurants that are finding it difficult to support their workers, we have launched the Zomato Gold Support Fund. Individual users can contribute to this cause by purchasing or renewing an annual Gold membership. All proceeds from the Zomato Gold subscriptions in the month of April 2020 will go towards supporting restaurant workers in need and the users will get an additional year of Gold free, as a token of our gratitude. This has already been launched in India and UAE, and will be live in other markets over the next few days. 

• Takeaway – we are launching takeaway in Australia and Portugal, to support restaurants in the current situation and also help our users, with what is a need of the hour in these times.

Our underprivileged community – India’s daily wage workers

• Food Security – Zomato’s mission is ‘better food for more people’. And for some underserved segments of our country, ‘better food’ simply means being able to put some food on the table. 

• Feeding Foundation – Zomato runs a not-for-profit called the Feeding Foundation (in India, known as Feeding India). The purpose of Feeding Foundation is to leverage our relationship with the food industry, and our users to be able to provide food security to millions of people who run the risk of dying from hunger. In the middle of this chapter, we also started the Philippines chapter of the Feeding Foundation, called Feeding Philippines.

• Feed the Daily Wager – about 450 million Indians depend on daily wages to run their household and have lost their livelihoods due to the lockdown. All these people are going hungry and they desperately need someone’s support. To help with the situation, we started the “Feed the Daily Wager” initiative in India, wherein we are distributing ration kits to daily wager communities. These ration kits provide 100 meals to a family (three meals a day for a family of five, for a week).
• This initiative is powered by people like you – we have been able to raise ₹25 crores for this from individuals and corporates, and are aiming to double the amount. If you haven’t already done so, please donate towards feeding our daily wagers at http://www.feedingindia.org/donate; countless drops fill an ocean – please add yours.
• We have already distributed more than 100,000 ration kits (to the same number of daily wager families) in more than 20 cities as of now. Apart from our mega cities, we have now also started distributing these ration kits in other cities like Patna, Jhansi, Guwahati, Dehradun etc.
• We plan to distribute 1M ration kits as part of this initiative, and have already secured supplies to do that.
• Working for Feeding India is incredibly humbling. Here are some images and conversations that will move you.

For people who are directly affected by COVID-19

• Food for quarantine facilities – as an essential service provider, it is important we find more than just a few ways to help our community fight against this pandemic. We have teamed up with Apollo Hospitals to deliver food to those who are in isolation wards, in their quarantine facilities. We are currently doing this in Bangalore and Hyderabad, and are expanding this support to hospitals/quarantine facilities across major cities.

That’s all for now. If there is anything else you think we can/should do, please write to me at d@zomato.com

Stay safe.