A recent development that has attracted much attention is the immediate discontinuation of the ‘Legends’ service by Zomato, one of India’s most popular food delivery applications. ‘Legends’, which was started two years ago, promised to deliver the specialities of different cities in India to customers across the country. However, despite such a promising strategy, the service could not gain the required market demand, and thus was shut down.
Few months back, Zomato announced that they will suspend the service, that came after they faced a legal issue when a Delhi resident accused them for delivering pre-stocked food on the legends service.
The Concept and Its Challenges
‘Legends’ was launched as an intercity food delivery service to meet the unique food preferences of the Indian population. The service was to provide “legendary” foods from 10 different cities to provide a one of a kind dining experience that was not confined to a particular location. But the implementation was not as easy as expected.
In a recent tweet on X, Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal announced the shutdown of ‘Legends’ stating that after two years of trying, the company could not find the product-market fit and therefore decided to shut down the service immediately.
Market Need and Demand
The main stated cause for the shutdown is the absence of the market fit. However, efforts made to enhance the quality of the service as well as to increase efficiency in meeting the market needs were futile in Zomato. The challenges of delivering food between cities include issues to do with quality of the food and the time it takes to deliver the food. Also, there was a lack of congruencies between what consumers wanted and expected, and what ‘Legends’ was providing them with.
