Malls need to be ‘more humane’ towards delivery partners: Zomato CEO hits out

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal on Sunday said that malls need to be “more humane” towards delivery partners, sharing his first-hand experience as a delivery executive picking up orders for the foodtech giant.

The Zomato CEO and his wife Grecia Munoz, who changed her name to Gia Goyal on Instagram, earlier took on the role of delivery partners to deliver orders in Gurugram and get a first-hand experience of challenges faced by them.

Sharing his experience in a social media post, Goyal said: “During my second order, I realised that we need to work with malls more closely to improve working conditions for all delivery partners. And malls also need to be more humane to delivery partners. What do you think?” The Zomato CEO tagged a video with the post elaborating upon the experience.

“We reached Ambience Mall in Gurugram to pick up the order from Haldiram’s. Was told to take the other entrance, and realised they are asking me to take the stairs. Went in again on the main entrance to make sure there are aren’t any elevators for delivery partners”.

Goyal further said that he took the stairs to the third floor to realise that delivery partners cannot enter the mall and have to wait at the stairs to receive orders.

“Chilled with my fellow delivery partners while also getting valuable feedback from them,” the Zomato CEO said, adding that he was finally able to sneak in to collect the order when the staircase guard “took a small break”.

Last month, the company introduced a new point-of-sale (POS) developer platform designed to simplify and speed up integration for POS partners.

“Over the last several years, Zomato, in partnership with various POS players, has worked deeply to innovate on new features, helping restaurants transform the way they manage and optimise their operations. As the restaurant industry scales, there is a need to enable POS players, both new and existing, to be able to solve problems in a quick and efficient manner for more restaurants,” Zomato said in a blog post.