Blinkit CEO Albinder Dhindsa on January 10 announced the launch of ‘Bistro’ a 10-minute food delivery offering. It is the latest offering from Blinkit.
“Introducing Bistro – Blinkit’s new 10 minute food offering. Bistro is a new app, outside of Blinkit and Zomato. This service is currently live across a few locations in Gurugram to help us find product market fit,” Dhindsa wrote in a post on X.
Dhindsa also played down fears of the company launching its own brand, an alleged practice by e-commerce giants like Amazon.
“Also, as @deepigoyal has always said, Zomato will never launch private brands on the Zomato app to compete with its restaurant partners. This still holds true. Which is why this service is not being built within Zomato (the organisation which runs the brand, or the app). This is a standalone team, with a standalone app – and no Zomato restaurant data has been used. We will not even use the Zomato app to market Bistro,” he explained.
Dhindsa’s clarification came on the back of allegations by the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), which claimed that Zomato and Swiggy is leveraging their dominant market positions and access to restaurant data to launch private-label food products either directly or through subsidiaries like Blinkit Bistro and Swiggy Cafe/Snacc.
This is going to be a significant additional cost to us, but ethics and sticking to our word mean more than anything else to us at Zomato and we are not going to give it up to save some marketing cost, Dhindsa added.
“All the companies innovating with us on Bistro also work with a number of restaurants and our success at Bistro has the potential to add value for the entire food & restaurant ecosystem,” he said.
The Blinkit CEO in his post wrote that Bistro will offer customers high quality, canteen type food, delivered hot in 10 minutes. “We believe high quality food that is more accessible has the potential to induct more customers into “outside of home” food consumption. To achieve this, we are innovating on the entire food supply chain with Bistro,” he added.
No preservatives or food processors are used in preparing the food in Bistro, nor is it microwaved processed food, Dhindsa said, adding “we have partnered with a number of companies innovating in the food industry to make this happen and will continue to support the ecosystem.”
NRAI opposition
The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) on January 10 voiced strong opposition to food delivery giants Zomato and Swiggy entering private-label food delivery through their quick-commerce platforms. The industry body, representing over five lakh restaurants in India, argued that this move violates marketplace neutrality and undermines fair competition, posing a significant threat to the survival of restaurants nationwide.
The NRAI accused Zomato and Swiggy of leveraging their dominant market positions and access to restaurant data to launch private-label food products either directly or through subsidiaries like Blinkit Bistro and Swiggy Cafe/Snacc. “This strategy cannibalises the business of restaurants that rely on these platforms,” the NRAI stated, adding that it raises legal concerns under the Copyright Act and related laws.
