Foodtech major Zomato has expanded its partnership with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and is now delivering food to train passengers across more than 100 railway stations in the country.
Zomato founder and chief executive officer Deepinder Goyal took to social media platform X on Friday (September 13) to make the announcement.
“Update: @zomato now delivers food directly to your train coach at over 100 railway stations, thanks to our partnership with @IRCTCofficial. We’ve already served 10 lakh orders on trains. Try it on your next journey!” Goyal said.
Zomato first partnered with IRCTC in 2023 to launch a pilot for online food delivery across 5 stations on the Indian Railways network – New Delhi, Prayagraj, Kanpur, Lucknow and Varanasi.
Since then, it has expanded this service to other locations such as Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Goa, Bhopal, Surat, among others.
Zomato is not the only company offering online food delivery to train passengers. In March this year, IPO-bound Swiggy also joined hands with IRCTC to deliver food across four stations — Bengaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada.
Swiggy plans to expand this service to 59 railway stations in the coming months.
The announcement comes at a time when Zomato is expanding its services and market presence in the food delivery market. At the end of the financial year, which ended March 2024 (FY24), Zomato had 2.76 Lakh restaurant partners on its platform, compared to 61,000 at the end of FY19.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that Zomato now commands a 56-57% market share in the food delivery market. The brokerage firm expects Zomato to see a 31% growth in its gross order volumes (GOV) during the FY24-27 period, making it the fastest-growing food delivery company within its coverage globally.
Flush with cash after having posted a multifold growth in its consolidated net profit in Q1 FY25, Zomato has been launching new features and services over the last few months to shore up its revenue. Recently, it acquired the movies and events ticketing business of fintech giant Paytm for INR 2,048 Cr in an all-cash deal.
Earlier this week, it also launched a developer platform for its point of sale (PoS) partners. It also launched other features like ‘ticket reselling’, order rescheduling, and ‘Zomato for Enterprises’, among others, recently.
Shares of Zomato ended 3.9% lower at INR 272.9 apiece on the BSE today.
Note : Company data was last updated as of Mar 2024
