INDIA – Zomato, online food delivery firm in India, said it has delisted over 5000 restaurant partners in February after failing to comply with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s (FSSAI) hygiene standards.

As part of monitoring hygiene compliance, Zomato said it is working with FSSAI in conducting audits of all restaurants listed on the platform, across 150 cities in the country.

According to Mohit Gupta, Chief Executive Officer at Zomato’s food deliver business, this seeks to ensure compliance among its partner restaurants, reports ET Retail.

“We are adding 400 restaurants to our platform every day. So, it is crucial that our restaurant partners are compliant with regulations and hygiene standards

For this reason, We have been re-evaluating all 80,000-plus restaurants listed on Zomato, helping them be compliant, and delisting those that have failed to follow regulations in spite of continuous efforts,” Mohit Gupta said.

In a statement, the firm said that it is educating its restaurant partners to obtain a licence, as well as meet the necessary hygiene standards.

As a result, the number of compliant restaurants on the platform has increased by over 30,000 in the past six months.

Meanwhile, Zomato has also launched An experience centre in Bengaluru, India that seeks to provide a uniquely differentiated experience to its delivery partner’s right from their sourcing and on boarding to various benefits.

The Bengaluru-based centre will be managed by BetterPlace, India’s largest technology platform for life cycle management of blue collar workforce. 

Through the centre, the firm will be directly responsible for managing several delivery fleet-related activities including, verification of documents, conducting interviews and trainings.

“We firmly believe that our delivery fleet is the backbone of Zomato’s online ordering business and our partnership with BetterPlace is a factor of our core beliefs.

With the experience centre in picture, we expect to not only enable our delivery partners to benefit heavily from it but, also hope to see an improvement in end user experience,” said Mohit Kumar, COO, Food Delivery at Zomato.

The centre expects to on-board around 200 delivery executives per day.

Zomato is a restaurant reviews, restaurant discovery, food delivery and dining out transactions platform providing information of over 1.4 million restaurants across 24 countries and serves more than 65 million users every month.