Entrackr's April 2025 investigation found that Swiggy was promoting its Snacc brand inside the main Swiggy app, and Bistro was advertised inside Blinkit, which shares a parent company with Zomato. Restaurants fear the platforms could use order data to favour their own brands. A separate CCI probe, reported by Reuters, found both platforms broke competition law by favouring select restaurants.
Two ten-minute food brands from the marketplaces
Swiggy has launched Snacc, and Zomato is backing Bistro through Blinkit. Both sell food with a promise of delivery in about ten minutes, which puts them up against the restaurants listed on apps run by the same companies. Entrackr's investigation, published in April 2025, went past the headline worry and compared the public assurances given about Bistro with what users can actually see in the apps.
Why restaurants are worried about data
The fear is less about extra competition than about information. Zomato and Swiggy can see what customers like, how orders move through the day, when demand peaks and which cuisines sell best in each neighbourhood. No single restaurant on either platform has that view.
Thomas Fenn, Joint Secretary of the restaurant body NRAI, was quoted by Entrackr describing how the platforms buy food from third-party kitchens, sell it under private labels and draw on marketplace data, which he said gives them 'an unfair advantage'. In his view there is nothing to stop the platforms steering diners towards brands they own, priced lower and without the heavy commissions that restaurants carry.
Fenn also pointed to price parity clauses as a second restriction that makes matters worse. He wants food delivery brought under rules modelled on Press Note 3, the regulation already covering e-commerce marketplaces.
What the platforms said, and what Entrackr saw in the apps
Albinder Dhindsa, CEO of Blinkit, responded on X. He said the Zomato app would never carry Zomato-owned brands set up to compete with the restaurants on it, and described Bistro as a separate business with its own app, which does not use Zomato's restaurant data and is not advertised on the Zomato app.
Entrackr's own look at the apps gave a more mixed result:
- Inside the Zomato app, it found no promotion for Bistro, which matches what Dhindsa said.
- Inside the Blinkit app, a banner was advertising Bistro.
- Swiggy's Snacc was given prominent promotion within the main Swiggy app.
Zomato, Blinkit and Bistro also belong to one parent company. That structure makes it very hard for anyone outside the group to check whether data is passing between them.
What regulators have already found
The private-label dispute is not the only complaint on file. A Reuters report from November 2024 said an investigation by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) had concluded that Zomato and Swiggy broke competition law by favouring certain restaurants:
- Zomato, through exclusivity contracts that came with lower commissions.
- Swiggy, by assuring restaurants of guaranteed business growth if they listed with it exclusively.
Separately, NRAI, which represents more than 500,000 restaurants, has petitioned the CCI arguing that the private-label practices breach Section 3(1) of India's Competition Act. Entrackr has seen the petition, and the investigation into it is continuing. When Entrackr put the data concerns to both companies, Zomato would not comment, and three weeks on Swiggy still had not responded.
The e-commerce precedent
The comparison restaurants draw with online retail has history behind it. Amazon and Flipkart faced very similar charges of using seller data to push their own brands. In 2016 the government's industry department, DPIIT, introduced Press Note 3, which bars marketplaces with foreign funding from holding stock or favouring preferred sellers.
The report also looks beyond India. China's market regulator, SAMR, imposed a $534 million penalty on Meituan in 2021 over anti-competitive practices connected to its dominant position. The US, where DoorDash and Uber Eats have made similar private-label moves, regulates far more lightly, with attention mostly on labour and data privacy rather than on whether a marketplace stays neutral.
What is and is not proven
None of this proves that Bistro or Snacc misuse restaurant data, and there is no public evidence that they do. What it does show is that one company running a marketplace while also owning a brand that competes with the restaurants it lists has become an open question for regulators in India, and the CCI has already found related violations.
What this means for your restaurant
- Read your platform agreements for exclusivity and price parity terms. The CCI finding concerned exclusivity deals tied to lower commissions or promised growth, and Fenn names price parity clauses as a further restriction.
- Watch where platform-owned brands are promoted. Entrackr found Snacc featured in the main Swiggy app and a Bistro banner in Blinkit, so note whether they start appearing where your own listing competes for attention.
- Keep track of NRAI's Section 3(1) petition, which is still under investigation, and of Fenn's call for Press Note 3-style rules in food delivery. Either could affect how far platforms can run food brands alongside the restaurants they list.
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.