Goyal has asked the National Restaurant Association of India to enlist its grievances against aggregator companies, including the issue of discounts that the group says has adversely affected their business.
Goyal is seeking to resolve the stalemate between NRAI and food delivery and search platform Zomato on deep discounting, a person familiar with the matter said.
“The NRAI has received a communication from the ministry of commerce asking us to formally enlist our grievances with the aggregators, particularly those concerning deep discounts and data masking,” NRAI president Anurag Katriar told ET.
“The ministry is deeply concerned with the deep discounting being offered by ecommerce players that is hurting small businesses, restaurants being one of them.”
He said the association sent its list of grievances to the ministry on Monday.
Restaurants across the country started a “logout” campaign against food aggregators, including Zomato, on August 15, alleging “deep discounting, lack of transparency, data masking and abuse of dominant position by online delivery aggregators.” The stalemate continues with Zomato, while issues with other aggregators have largely been resolved.
The key grouse against Zomato is its ‘gold’ membership programme, which gives customers one-plus-one offers on food or liquor, with participating restaurants bearing the burden of the discounts.
After the logout campaign started, Zomato extended the ‘gold’ programme to home delivery as well, which led to the flare-up between the two sides. A Zomato spokesperson said it has always maintained that the ‘gold’ discount programme is not for everyone.
“While we believe our programmes keep industry’s best interest in mind, the decision of participating in any Zomato product is completely optional. We work with our partners to determine if participating in an ongoing campaign, let alone a programme, makes commercial sense for them,” the spokesperson said.
Goyal told the media last Thursday that “strict action” will be taken against ecommerce companies violating India’s rules and that they have no right to offer discounts or adopt predatory pricing.
“They have no right to harm small retailers by using the method of predatory pricing,” he had said, replying to a media query at a Mumbai event, referring mainly to alleged predatory pricing by Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon. Goyal added that the government will take the strictest action against ecommerce companies if they are found to be violating India’s ecommerce policy in “letter or spirit.”
