The words Zomato and Swiggy do not belong to English or to any other language. They have been coined by some bright heads who started the companies, which are basically platforms for grocers and restaurants providing food at home or workplace. Zomato also owns ‘blinkit’, the meaning of which is obvious if you can ignore that ‘blink’ and ‘it’ as one word cannot be a noun. The other two names required research before I could make sense of them.
Zomato was initially called ‘Foodiebay’ but dropped the name because of its similarity with ‘ebay’. Zomato, being close to tomato, indicates the company’s food-related profile. That’s why the new name. Swiggy is a variation of ‘suggi’ in Kannada and means harvest or food festival. Headquartered in Bangalore, it is younger than Zomato by six years.
That Zomato turned sweet 16 in July this year was informed to me by the company itself. As its birthday offer, at just 40 rupees, Zomato made me a ‘Gold’ member, and it makes it a point to tell me on every order how much money it has saved me in terms of free delivery. I am keen to know how much money the company made from its ‘Gold’ members on its birthday, and for how many days it celebrated the birthday.
Money-making comes easy to a smart company. Zomato is providing free delivery after having collected crores of rupees on its birthday, but ‘blinkit’ is not. I don’t know why it charges me a standard delivery charge of 16 rupees and at what point waives off 14 rupees, the total fee being 30 rupees. Then there is a “ handling charge” of four rupees per order and 30 rupees surcharge during high demand hours.
The restaurants must obviously be paying platform fee to the companies. Some days I see that by 10 in the morning, blinkit has already handled lakhs of orders. Small, almost invisible, amount of money collected from millions of customers follow an important law of money-making. On Mother’s Day this year, 700 cakes a minute were ordered on blinkit/Zomato.
All such information snippets, which tell me a story about the company’s success and about urban Indians, are on the house. As is charming advice like the following: “Place order or not but remember to water your plants”, “A reminder to straighten your back”, “The best offer is offering water to the delivery partner” and “ Have spinach and carrots for iron during periods.”
The online grocery and fresh food platforms are also doing a great job of keeping me and millions of lazy cooks away from the kitchen. Even the decades’ old tiffin service that started in Bombay (long before the city was renamed Mumbai)and slowly became a trend in many cities, has been upgraded, thanks to Zomato and Swiggy. Instead of providing the ‘dabba’, a tiffin service I tried to access in Gurugram, turned out to be a service platform just like the big companies.
Reading about the journey of Zomato on Wikipedia, my head reeled under the statistics of its success. The company established itself in many countries, including the U.S. and Australia, until it shrank its operations to just India and the UAE. I don’t know its latest status–and I don’t want to know. I am not writing this piece from the perspective of a business journalist, but that of a happy consumer.
The consumer in me is happy despite the knowledge that I am mostly being ripped off.
The fruits I used to buy by the kilos, including oranges, mangoes, bananas and grapes, from the vendors I went to, are being supplied at home, but in pieces and grams. I see an item costing 178 bucks nicely crossed and reduced to 117, whereas the price of the same at the cart would be 70 rupees. Believe it or not, three bananas, blackened by being kept in the refrigerator, cost 46 rupees on blinkit, and the price has been almost constant the last few months. And green coconut, even when it has turned brown and un-openable, moves mostly between 85 and 110 rupees, whereas the vendor charges 60 rupees.
Earlier, I had the facility of examining what I bought, but now I have to take pictures of the bad stuff and present my case meticulously before I get a refund or replacement. I do think it is a bit of a pain having to chat with a customer care executive instead of having my breakfast in peace, but I put up with it. The company saves me a daily trip to the housing society gate where a vendor parks his dairy, fruit and grocery-providing mobile van.
I don’t know when blinkit started charging me 18 rather than 16 rupees as standard delivery charge or whether it did that only on certain days, but I do notice how many lakh customers by a certain morning hour have contributed two rupees each to blinkit’s coffers. Swiggy’s discount offers sometimes, that reduce the food bill to 300 rupees that would have cost me 1000 if I were to go to the restaurant, cheer me no end.
Even when I know I am being overcharged by blinkit through both covert and overt means, I feel okay about it. The occasional attractive discounts, thrown in like pepper and cumin seeds on top of bland potatoes, thrill me, as does a ten-rupee ball pen as free gift on an order of 1830 rupee. I like the psychology of such marketing, it brings alive the child in me. About the physiology, this is my experience. Thanks to the speedy home delivery, now I don’t have to think how hot, cold and slushy it is outside to go out shopping. Of course the blink of the eye has become 10 to 17 minutes long– from a nano second– but all other time windows have become wonderfully short.
That both Zomato and Swiggy are Indian companies, inviting envy from my trans-Atlantic relatives, is the icing on the cake.
Zepto, the latest to enter the scene, is wooing me with ads on my mobile, and it is only a matter of time before the new kid on the block, ‘chotu online’, currently sending me emails about its ambitious project, finds a place in my mobile apps. Meanwhile, Big Basket, Eat Right Basket and Amazon Fresh, that can take hours to provide stuff at the doorstep, have fallen by the wayside along my app road. The individual grocers, who loyally delivered at home in every area where I lived, are a faint memory now.
Going by the trend, the here-and-now suppliers, dressed in apps, and delivering everything– from dinner sets to safety pins at the doorstep, are going to grow by leaps and bounds. Thanks to them, Indian consumers, especially in big cities, are saving loads of time and energy. The employment generation for the unskilled by these companies is also gratifying. To see unlettered delivery men from 18 to 50 years old, dripping with summer body salt–and gratitude–when tipped, is a moving experience.
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