KrASIA reported in June 2021 that, according to NRAI, roughly 80% of its members had begun using alternative tech platforms. Restaurants cited 22–25% commissions, one-sided scheme changes and no access to customer data from Zomato and Swiggy. They used Petpooja and DotPe for orders and payments, and Shadowfax and Dunzo for delivery.
One outlet's reason for cutting back
Most days, more than a dozen Swiggy and Zomato riders wait outside Shake it Off, a beverage outlet in Bengaluru, to collect orders. Its founder, Nishant Kumar, wants to bring that number down by 25% within the year. The platforms have brought him volume; his worry is that leaning on them too heavily is hurting the business over time.
KrASIA's June 2021 report uses his case to look at the tools restaurants were adopting, and at the complaints behind the move:
- Commissions taking 22–25% of the order value.
- Scheme changes decided by the platforms alone.
- No customer data passed back to the restaurants that earned the orders.
NRAI, which represents more than 500,000 restaurants, said that by then roughly 80% of its members were already on alternative tech platforms. Its president Anurag Katriar, who owns the Indigo restaurant chain, said businesses needed to take charge and decide how their digital presence should look, without bleeding money on heavy discounts. Zomato and Swiggy did not answer KrASIA's questions.
Ordering and payments: Petpooja and DotPe
Petpooja, based in Ahmedabad, digitises outlets, runs online orders and takes care of payments. Kumar relies on it to bring people into the outlet, with extra discounts and loyalty coupons that can be redeemed in store or against the customer's next order through the app.
NRAI chose DotPe as its partner for a shared platform covering online ordering, payments and contactless dining. DotPe says more than 50,000 restaurants and food courts use its system.
Its CEO, Shailaz Nag, said the real advantage is personalisation built on data: a customer ordering from a restaurant for the first time and one ordering for the tenth time can be offered different deals and discounts, which he says aggregator apps do not provide. Nag also claimed that a restaurant chain ranked among the largest in India lifted revenue by 22% using DotPe.
The customer data the aggregators keep
KrASIA is direct about the core dispute. Zomato and Swiggy share no customer data at all with the restaurants on their apps, which the report describes as a major bone of contention. Services like DotPe pitch the reverse: the restaurant gets the full customer information, with no platform holding it back in between.
Delivery: Shadowfax and Dunzo
Taking orders is one part of the dependence; getting them to the customer is the other.
- Shadowfax started training a fleet dedicated to food delivery in 2018, and says restaurants pay 15% less for delivery with it than with the two incumbents.
- Dunzo, better known for groceries and errands, added a section for food orders, with a dashboard of its own covering orders, payments and delivery scheduling.
Shreyash Jhunjhunwala, who leads business at Dunzo, said a number of businesses and restaurants had approached it for logistics over the previous year. He put restaurants at 50% of Dunzo's B2B orders, across Mumbai, Delhi, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.
How the stand-off began
KrASIA traces the tension to Zomato Gold, which started in January 2018. To draw dine-in customers, members received a free drink or dish alongside the one they paid for, but restaurants rather than Zomato ended up carrying the cost. NRAI's 2019 #logout campaign against the programme took about 300 restaurants out at first, and scrutiny later spread to comparable schemes from Swiggy, Magicpin, Dineout and Nearbuy.
Kumar's own figures show the pressure. At first, he said, discounts ran at 40%, with the platforms paying 30% and the restaurant 10%; now restaurants carry all of it. His margin on a dine-in order is roughly 70%, against about 30% on an online one. As he put it, online orders have become a liability.
What this means for your restaurant
- Compare your margins by channel. Kumar's example of roughly 70% on dine-in against 30% online shows why the mix of orders matters as much as the volume.
- Find out who is funding each discount. Kumar's share went from 10 points of a 40% discount to the entire discount.
- Treat ordering and delivery as separate decisions. KrASIA's examples split them, with Petpooja and DotPe for orders and payments and Shadowfax and Dunzo for delivery. The report dates from June 2021, so check what each service offers today.
- Keep hold of your customer data where you can. The aggregators do not share it, while DotPe's pitch is that the restaurant gets it in full and can use it to offer different deals to first-time and repeat customers.
Sources
This article summarises the reporting and guides listed above; the figures belong to those sources and are attributed in the text. Check anything that affects your business against your own platform agreements, payout statements and advisers.