Over 500,000 restaurants have protested against Zomato and Swiggy, accusing them of unethical business practises.

 

The battle between the restaurant industry's governing organisation, the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), and online food aggregators looks to be ongoing.

For over a year, the restaurant association, which represents over 500,000 establishments, has complained and expressed concern over food aggregators like Zomato and Swiggy's "anti-competitive" tactics.

On Monday, NRAI announced that it has filed a complaint with India's fair trade regulator, the Competition Commission of India, regarding unfair practises by food aggregators (CCI).

Swiggy and Zomato are being investigated by the NRAI:

On July 1, the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) filed a detailed complaint with the CCI against food aggregators Zomato and Swiggy.

This isn't the first time the organisation has done something like this. Many restaurants in the NRAI decided to break their relations with food aggregators in 2019 as part of the #LogOut campaign, in protest to the latter's deep discounting methods, which affected restaurants' income.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, the distance between the two groups grew even wider.

The following are the primary topics that the restaurant body has taken up, as submitted to the CCI:

• Combining services

• Obscuring of data

• Commission charged at an unreasonable rate

• Agreements on pricing parity

• In addition to requiring restaurant partners to provide discounts in order to maintain appropriate listing, heavy discounting is used.

• Exclusivity of listed eateries and non-neutrality of the platform

• Vertical integration as well as

• According to Business Standard, there is a lack of openness on meal ordering services.

There isn't any common ground to be found:

Anurag Katriar, President of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), said the organization has been in continual contact with food service aggregators for the past 15-18 months to resolve crucial concerns affecting the industry.

Despite these efforts, the relationship between the body and the food aggregators appears to be unresolved.

“As a result, we have requested the CCI to look into the problem and conduct a full investigation,” says Katrirar.

In addition to the existing malpractices carried out by Swiggy and Zomato, the magnitude of these actions from their end expanded threefold during the pandemic, according to Katriar.

“Despite negotiations, these well-funded marketplace platforms were not interested in easing restaurant concerns,” he continues. During the pandemic, many of our partners were forced to close their doors due to the onerous restrictions imposed.”

(Source: https://trak.in)

(Image By: Zoli gy from Pixabay)