Zomato launches ‘Pure Veg Mode’ for vegetarian customers

Food-delivery platform Zomato on Tuesday launched a ‘Pure Veg Mode’ along with a ‘Pure Veg Fleet’ for customers who have a 100% vegetarian dietary preference.

Taking to microblogging platform X, Zomato chief executive Deepinder Goyal said, “Pure Veg Mode will consist of curation of restaurants that serve only pure vegetarian food and will exclude all restaurants which serve any non-veg food item.”



For the rationale behind the move, Goyal cited feedback the platform got from vegetarian customers who are very particular about how their food is cooked and handled.

The Pure Veg Fleet will serve orders only from restaurants offering pure vegetarian food. Essentially, this means a non-veg meal or a veg meal served by a non-veg restaurant will not go inside the green delivery box meant for the Pure Veg Fleet.

Goyal said the move is not meant to serve or alienate any religious, or political preference.

The Gurugram-based company is planning to add more specialised fleets for specific customer needs, such as a cake delivery fleet that will have hydraulic balancers to prevent cakes from getting smudged during delivery, Goyal said.

This feature will see a phased rollout across the country in the next few weeks.

On Monday, speaking at the Startup Mahakumbh in New Delhi, Goyal said quick-commerce arm Blinkit will become larger than Zomato’s food-delivery business in a year.

In a chat with Info Edge cofounder and vice-chairman Sanjeev Bikhchandani, who also sits on Zomato’s board, Goyal said, “For us, it’s all about how we disrupt our own businesses… we have a business plan competition wherein we will offer funds to a small team, which will disrupt the businesses that we’re in.”

“This will lead to Zomato version 5 or Blinkit version 2. Blinkit is a part of Zomato version 4, and in one year’s time, Blinkit would be bigger than Zomato,” he added.

Zomato posted its first quarterly profit in April-June FY24, but Goyal said the company went into a loss-making stage because of the funding it raised early on.