Food delivery back to 85% of pre-Covid GMV level; full recovery may follow IPL, festive season: Zomato

Foodtech company Zomato on Wednesday said that the food delivery market in India has recovered to around 85 per cent of the pre-Covid gross merchandise value (GMV) level — up from around 75 per cent in August. Ever since Covid struck, Zomato has been rolling out reports explaining the pandemic’s impact on its businesses and the industry. Its July report noted the company’s GMV hitting “its lowest point in two years” to 80 per cent in the last week of March that recovered to 60 per cent in July. “With the ongoing IPL season and the subsequent festival season, we expect food delivery in both metros and smaller cities to make a full recovery soon – and resume growing over pre-COVID levels,” Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, Zomato said in the company blog post.

Food delivery took a severe hit right after the pandemic broke out as customers refrained from ordering food online amid safety concerns even as eating out and dining out activities were reduced to zero or negligible. Also, delivery boys of food delivery companies including Zomato and Swiggy and a pizza delivery company were reported Covid positive back in April that had also added to the overall impact on the online food delivery segment.

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The latest report by Zomato, however, claimed that the market has recovered to pre-Covid or even beyond that level driven by affluent pockets in India. For instance, affluent parts of cities like “Kolkata, Patna, Jamshedpur, Ranchi, and Siliguri have recovered completely and have exceeded the pre-COVID level.” Also, South Delhi bounced back to 110 per cent of the pre-Covid level while places like Connaught Place in Central Delhi have been able to recover back to pre-pandemic level. Zomato claimed that more premium restaurants are now opening up to online delivery even as overall spend in these restaurants by affluent customers grew by more than 25 per cent over pre-Covid level.