Zomato on Wednesday sent a letter to its restaurant partners saying some changes have been made to the Gold offering, which will be rolled out before September 15, 2019. While empathising with the restaurant industry, Goyal outlined a 10-point programme saying, "We are going to do everything we can in order to protect the underlying asset behind our product – your restaurant," Deepinder Goyal, founder, Zomato, said.
In the letter to restaurant partners, Goyal stated that Zomato will limit Gold usage by a single user to one unlock per day, thus bringing the net effective discount down significantly. Among other initiatives are restricting the number of unlocks to a max of two per table, limiting a user's login ID to a single mobile device at a time.
The food-tech firm will also issue automatic pro-rata refunds to Gold users not agreeing to the renewed policies, set Rs 1,800 as minimum annual Gold membership fee, discontinue the recently launched trial packs. Gold members consistently giving bad reviews will now be churned out, restaurants will receive ad credit worth Rs 25,000 per outlet per quarter based on achieving certain milestones and creation of no-cost promotional videos to be shared on Zomato.
DISCOUNT TROUBLE
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- Zomato will limit Gold usage by a single user to one unlock per day, thus bringing the net effective discount down significantly
- Among other initiatives are restricting the number of unlocks to a max of two per table, limiting a user's login ID to a single mobile device at a time
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However, the NRAI management committee has termed it a knee-jerk reaction to the #logout movement and its meeting with Zomato's founding team. "It's a validation of the fact that Zomato acknowledges the deep discounting epidemic. However, the 'reconstruct of gold' is another attempt to stuff old wine in a new bottle. It's a tweak in the drug, which doesn't solve the addiction," said NRAI president Rahul Singh in a statement issued on Wednesday.
Interestingly, just two days ago, Zomato had invoked a stiff penalty clause on restaurant partners for rejoining the (Gold) programme if they did not serve the notice period. Going back on its decision, Zomato has now sweetened the pill in the form of free sign-up to rejoin the programme.
According to Singh, this programme has been shifting goalposts since its launch in November 2017. "What started as an exclusive invite-only privilege to a marketplace for 'bargain hunters', this Gold has lost its sheen forever. We stand united in the cause to obliviate the deep discounting phenomenon and will therefore #stayloggedout," Singh said.
As things go back to square one, all eyes will now be on Zomato's next move to resolve this conflict with the restaurant partners from across India.
