Swiggy denies exodus of high-end cafes, restaurants amid deep discounting concerns

As reports surfaced that several high-end restaurants with multiple outlets in Delhi-NCR have delisted from Swiggy Dineout amid deep discounting concerns, reliable industry sources said on Thursday that most of those cafes and restaurants have also delisted themselves from other online food delivery platforms like Zomato.

The sources told IANS that only 20 brands with nearly 400 outlets have delisted from Swiggy Dineout, and one of those brands even has nearly 250 dining outlets alone.

According to them, restaurants like Smoke House Deli, Social, The Beer Cafe and Mamagoto have deregistered themselves from most of the online food aggregator platforms, not just Swiggy.

Your Story publication earlier reported, quoting from the National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI) sources, that at least 400 brands and more than 900 dining outlets across 13 cities in the country have sent delisting notices to Swiggy in the last two weeks.

A Swiggy spokesperson told IANS that Swiggy Dineout works with over 15,000 restaurant partners on the platform in over 20 cities and continuously engages with them to improve its offering and make this partnership viable for everyone.

"Restaurant partners on Swiggy Dineout have complete liberty to decide on how much discount they wish to offer to customers through their listing on the app," the spokesperson said.

"Thousands of partners continue to join us each month and list on Swiggy Dineout and only a handful of restaurant partners have expressed their desire to delist from the platform. We continue to engage with restaurant partners and NRAI representatives to revisit their choices," the food delivery platform told IANS.

In online food delivery platform Swiggy in May announced it has acquired Dineout, a dining out and restaurant tech platform, for an undisclosed sum. According to sources, it was a $120 million deal.

Founded in 2012 by Ankit Mehrotra, Nikhil Bakshi, Sahil Jain, and Vivek Kapoor, Dineout helps people discover the best restaurants, make table reservations, and enjoy discounts and privileges across select restaurants.

NRAI has said that Dineout's deep discounting techniques disrupt the core dine-in business of the restaurants and "popularise a dangerous culture of discounting that will be irreversible".

SEE ALSO:
PNB Housing Finance Q2 profit rises 12 pc at Rs 263 cr
Rupee rises 34 paise to close at 82.47 against US dollar