Zomato's 10-minute delivery fails to cheer stock market investors

• The share price of Zomato dipped 1% on Tuesday morning.
• The development comes after Zomato announced its decision to enter 10-minute delivery.
• Zomato’s 10-minute delivery will be launched in Gurgaon next month.

While netizens discuss the pros and cons of Zomato’s latest decision to enter 10-minute delivery service, the stock market has not shown any strong reaction to it. The share price of Zomato dipped 1% on Tuesday morning trade, a few hours after the company made the official announcement.

The company’s shares were trading at ₹79.60 at 9:53 a.m., on March 22. This is very close to Zomato’s issue price of ₹76 at which initial public offering (IPO) investors bought the shares.

Zomato currently sits at a market capitalisation of ₹62,660 crore ($8 billion, at current conversion rate), which is almost half of the $15 billion market capitalisation the company reached in November 2021.

Rival Swiggy is valued more than Zomato ever since it raised $700 million from private investors in January 2021, at a valuation of $10.7 billion. Swiggy plans to invest this capital in order to further enhance its 10-minute delivery and groceries delivery vertical InstaMart.

Zomato’s 10-minute delivery will be launched in Gurgaon next month. The company has announced that the quick delivery service will rely on a dense network of “finishing counters”, which will be located in near high-demand customer neighbourhoods.

The food delivery app has noted that it will ensure that the food is “sterile, fresh and hot at the time it is picked by the delivery partner” by using “sophisticated dish-level demand prediction algorithms and future-ready in-stations robotics". The development comes only a few days after Zomato acquired robotics startup Mukunda.

Deepinder Goyal, founder and chief executive officer of Zomato, noted that sorting restaurants by fastest delivery time is one of the most used features on the app. He had a feeling that “30-minute average delivery time by Zomato is too slow, and will soon have to become obsolete… If we don't make it obsolete, someone else will.”

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