NEW DELHI : Online food ordering platform Swiggy said it intends to provide better tools and more insights to restaurant partners using the customer data it generates via its own platform.
“Giving data is a slippery slope where these are a lot of privacy and trust issues associated with it. What we need to do a much better job of is giving them the insights behind the data, giving them the better targeting techniques and tools on how to grow their business,” Srivats TS, vice president, marketing at Swiggy told Mint in an interview.
Currently, restaurant associations, led by the National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI) and food aggregators are undergoing discussions after the former raised concerns around steep discounting and bundling of services as offered by online food delivery companies that food chains claim are hurting footfalls at restaurants. Among the concerns listed by the NRAI, the restaurant association has listed data masking as a key concern. To be sure, online food delivery platforms typically fulfil deliveries on their own, which goes to say that a restaurant partner has little insight into orders generated via online delivery platforms. Representatives of the NRAI have claimed that this gives an unfair advantage to food aggregators and have sought more transparency on data sharing.
To be sure, Swiggy already provides insights in to their orders and metrics on how they perform on the platform. While the conversations between food aggregators and the NRAI to discuss such issues are still on, Srivats added that the company intends to provide better tools to restaurants partners.
“Of course they have raised it (the point around sharing more data), but I think the answer is fairly clear in that you would be breaching a lot of trust and privacy if you actually do that. They have access to tool, the journey is about getting better—can we give them better targeting and segmentation capabilities to segment and target, that’s the journey we need to make,” he added.
These conversations are an aftermath of a protest led by the NRAI in August this year that saw a few hundred restaurants log out of dining and membership driven platforms such as Zomato Gold, and others over concerns that steep discounting offered by them was hurting footfalls at eateries. The issue was also raised with the likes of Swiggy. As a result, representatives of Zomato, and Swiggy have been meeting with the top members of the NRAI to mend their differences and reach a more level playing field.
rivats added that the platform intends to work with the NRAI and restaurants to figure out solutions for their problems. “We are clear we need to be in an ecosystem where we are working together as opposed to working independently and if we think about long-term category creation that’s the only way we can build it,” said Srivats TS added.
The discussions are still on, with the legal teams of aggregators and the NRAI having an ongoing dialogue to reach terms that are amicable to both, a member of the NRAI told Mint.
We have taken all measures to ensure that the information provided in this article and on our social media platform is credible, verified and sourced from other Big media Houses. For any feedback or complaint, reach out to us at businessleaguein@gmail.com
