Table of Contents

Industry Analysis 2
Porter’s Five Force Analysis 2
5C Analysis 4
Company 4
Context 4
Customer 5
Collaborators 6
Competitors 7
7P Analysis 7
Pricing 7
Place 8
Promotion 9
Product 10
Process 11
People 12
Physical Evidence 14
References 15
MARKETING STRATEGIES

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS
The Internet development story in India is at the foot door stage. Besides, the normal
development in web clients, higher online buys give a fillip to development of web
organizations in India. Internet spending is predicted to rise quickly at 25% CAGR to $130+
Bn in 2025.

We see Online food requesting space customers being represented by advancing requests and
boundaries concerning food tech aggregators. Our exploration demonstrated that Peer or
Network promotion is an essential trigger behind buyers joining food tech stages, trailed by
showcasing and limits. A normal Indian purchaser blossoms with assortment. Choices to
investigate different cooking styles is the main trigger followed by utilization, however
ubiquitous limits and comfort intently follow.

Indian players can adjust to their specific circumstance, exercises from the worldwide online
food requesting space. Making an interpretation of purchaser experiences into key successes
for Indian Food Tech players: 

• To drive appropriation among non-clients, centre around catalysing peer backing through
both money related and network commitment activities 

• In equal, these players can zero in on breaking obstructions, for example, absence of trust in
the part of food applications and conveyance charge by guiding their endeavours to
significant showcasing correspondence techniques 

• The potential for Food tech players to expand utilization recurrence is enormous. This
envelops tending to customer desires for customization, quality confirmation, natural inviting
bundling, requesting adaptability and incentive for cash and so on (advancements, limits and
offers) Road ahead to keep winning in the Food Tech space: As profound personalization gets
basic for purchasers, Food Tech players would need to investigate further the capability of
cutting edge computerized examination and AI to give customized memberships, rewards,
promoting channels and creative proposals 

• Food Tech players can likewise investigate information examination to assemble activities,
for example, network enhancement and guide for entering new verticals 

• There is a colossal potential for Food Tech players to expand into a few new contributions
by utilizing client base, conveyance and administration aptitude 

• Finally, solid provider commitment and organizations upheld by enormous information can
furnish expanded reliability with eateries, higher consumer loyalty, expanded arrangement
power and greater confirmation

1
MARKETING STRATEGIES

PORTER’S FIVE FORCE ANALYSIS:

Bargaining power of buyers: 
Even with the presence of a large no. of buyers, their bargaining power is moderate to high
due to lower dependency on a single platform. Thus, presence of options to substitute (Like
Zomato, Swiggy, Fassos or even through restaurants own home delivery option) has
increased the power of buyers in the industry. Moreover, the switching cost between
platforms is negligible (Can be switched in a second with a single touch on mobile), thus the
companies have to attract consumers through discounts and promo offers.

Bargaining power of sellers:

Bargaining power of sellers is generally very low as there are very large no. of sellers
currently operating through these platforms. However, there are some exemptions too.

For ex: Restaurants having a significant demand amongst customers in certain regions, may
have more bargaining power due to their larger market share. Similarly, bigger brands like
McDonalds and Dominos have their own digital channels through which they can reach the
customers. These restaurants also receive significant order volumes through food delivery
apps like Zomato and Swiggy. This increases their bargaining power. 

Threat of Substitutes:
Every food delivery company is working on an online platform which can be accessed by
buyers simultaneously at negligible cost. Thus, the substitutability is high. Every time a buyer
has to place an order they go through every application, compare the price and then order
from the app where it is available at cheapest price. Thus, the brand loyalty is very low in this
industry and the threat of substitutes is high. The fight among the aggregators for securing
more and more order per day has indirectly intensified the threat of substitutability as buyers
have now got a hang of ordering after using promos only.

Threat of new entrants

The cost associated with this sector mainly accounts for customer acquisition which is very
high as there is tough competition and price-sensitive customers who can switch easily. The
brands in this industry have low differentiability. Also, the cost of maintaining the fleet and
entire delivery ecosystem is quite high as it will be difficult for new entrants to get access to
the distribution channels which are already in use by the existing players. Thus, the threat of
new entrants in this market is quite low. 

2
MARKETING STRATEGIES

Market Share of Food Delivery Apps in India

Swiggy
9% Zomato
9% 26% Dunzo
5% Deliveroo
5% Doordash
9% Restaurant Delivery (ex: Dominos,
Pizzahut)
37% Others

Extant Rivalry

*Calculation of HHI

HHI = 272 + 382 + 92 + 92+ 72+ 52+ 52 = 2400

HHI < 3000 thus it is a fragmented market. Thus, there is presently, tough competition in the
industry and companies have very less profitability to stay in the competition.

*The market share of Swiggy/Zomato has been taken from www.businesswire.com. Other
competitors are selected on the basis of no. of downloads on play store and thus the
remaining share is divided proportionately.

3
MARKETING STRATEGIES

5C ANALYSIS:
Company
Zomato was launched in 2008 by Mr. Deepinder Goyal, in Delhi. It has grown exponentially
from a home project initially named as Foodie bay to one of the world’s largest food
aggregators in the world. It not only connects people with food but also provides autonomous
ratings and reviews. Moreover, it also works closely with restaurants to enable a sustainable
ecosystem in the food value chain. Currently it serves 100 million+ foodies with a fleet of
5000+ people every day in 24 countries globally. Zomato currently provide following
services:

Context

Political:
 Initiatives are taken by Govt of India like Bharat Broadband network, Digital
India Campaign to increase digital access to people. Internet subscribers have
increased to 74.3 crores in March 2020.
 Changes in FDI policy - Investments from countries which share a land border
with India will now be permitted only under the approval route.
 Government restrictions on opening up of restaurants had a direct effect on the
food delivery business.

Economic:
 10 % dine-out restaurants across the country have shut down while another 30
% restaurants which currently are not operating due to Covid, are not likely to
reopen even after the pandemic ends.
 The unemployment rate has reached 7.9% in urban areas, and a 5.4 % decline
is expected in the per capita income of Indians in FY 2021.
 GST at 18% is applicable on commissions charged by Zomato from its partner
restaurants.

4
MARKETING STRATEGIES

Social:
 Increasing fear and safety concerns among customers due to Covid 19
pandemic (No-contact delivery).
 People are opting for online food delivery due to a variety of cuisines at one
place, good discounts and convenience.
 People are more open to trying out new cuisines.
 Eating outside and ordering outside food has become a social norm.
 Nuclear and working families are increasing, resulting in more online food
ordering and dining out.

Technological:
 Data science and AI/ML is being used to a greater extent for building a
recommendation engine based on various data points, an aesthetics scoring
system, natural language processing on reviews, etc.
 Beautiful, easy & intuitive user interface, vote option for dishes, SEO friendly
website.

Legal:
 FSSAI license & guidelines - removal of unregistered restaurants from the
platform, ensure that last-mile delivery is done by trained personnel and safety
of the package is not compromised at the time of delivery, food products
offered for sale are liable to sampling at any point, add an image of the food
on their platforms.

Environmental:
 The industry is avoiding single-use plastics and is shifting to eco-friendly
packaging.

Customer

Market size and growth

As per IBEF, Indian food industry report 2017, Indian food delivery industry has a
market size of around USD 15 billion. It observed a growth rate of 150 per cent year-
on-year in 2016.

5
MARKETING STRATEGIES

Market Segmentation 

Based on usage Based on customer motivation and

behaviour

Early stage: Convenience & flexibility of ordering:

 This includes customers who order only  getting food of your choice
on specific occasions (up to 2 orders per delivered where you are at any time
month). you want
 We conducted a survey, and around xx  avoiding going out and saving
% of customers fall into this category. time
 Early triggers: peer network,
advertisement, discounts
Growth stage: Variety of choices:
 This includes customers who have  aggregated menus of hundreds of
become habitual users (3-5 orders). restaurants at a single place
 We conducted a survey and around xx%  experimenting with cuisines
of customers fall in this category.
 Continued triggers: Variety,
convenience, discounts
Mature stage: Discover/book restaurants:
 This includes customers who order at a  Discover new restaurants to try
steady frequency (>5 orders). out at one place
 We conducted a survey and around xx%  Book tables to avoid waiting time
of customers fall in this category.
 Steady triggers: Quality assurance,
convenience

Collaborators
Zomato works as a merchandiser for its partner restaurants. They have a lot of
collaborators who are in a symbiotic relationship with each other:

1. Paytm 
2. PayPal
3. Free charge
4. All their partner restaurants
5. Online Payment Services 
6. 3rd party delivery partners

Zomato provides a number of payment options to its customers, including discounts and
rebates when paying through a specific channel (debit cards/credit cards/UPI etc.). Also,
customers receive incentives when they pay via a particular bank. These online payments
company profit a lot with their partnership via Zomato due to its significant customer base,
and also because customers are incentivised for online pre-payments. 

6
MARKETING STRATEGIES

The partner restaurants of Zomato is their biggest assets. Zomato helps these restaurants
increase their footfall, providing them with extensive marketing via their distributed network.
Zomato provides a platform for its partner restaurants who cannot engage in online marketing
by themselves. This incentivizes restaurants to partner up with Zomato, and then both the
parties are able to profit via their relationship 

Competitors
Food Delivery Competitors - Swiggy, Rebel Foods, Uber Eats (Now Acquired), Box8,
Dunzo, Food Panda

Restaurant Finder and Rating Competitors - EaszyDiner, Dine out, Justdial, Google

Parameters Swiggy Zomato

Number of daily orders 1.5 million 1.2 million

Average delivery time 32 minutes 38 minutes

Revenues Rs. 1121.7 crore Rs. 1,421 crores

Net Losses Rs 1,421 crore Rs. 2,000 crores

Play Store Downloads 50M+ 100M+

Play Store Rating 4.1 4.0

Play Store Reviews 1.83M 4.31M

iOS Downloads 50M+ 100M+

iOS Rating 4.3 4.6

iOS Reviews 235K reviews 1.5M reviews

7
MARKETING STRATEGIES

7P Analysis:
1.Pricing:
Three major strengths of Zomato are: user penetration and market share, rich data about users
and supplier relationships. With its presence in more than 500 cities, Zomato engages several
pricing schemes such as deep discounting and penetration pricing strategies. It maintains a
price elasticity so that there is a balance between rice and demand while generating maximum
revenue.

Deep discounting:

Zomato is known for offering high discounts to customers. Trying to deliver the measure of
bringing restaurants closer to customers, it leads to one-upmanship to acquire customers by
deep discounting and has been recently accused of spoiling customers and eroding loyalty.

Penetration Pricing:

It is offered to get customers to order from unrated/new restaurants until the customer base is
developed and they start coming organically.

Skimming pricing:

It is offered to generate the maximum possible profits from the exclusively listed restaurants
until such exclusivity is lost.

Zomato Gold:

Through Gold, customers could gain wider choices, greater transparency and convenience.
Under the O2 scheme, the restaurant offers a free item along with a higher priced item with
18-25 % payment of net order value.

There was a focus on dine-in, leading to wide scale competition and deep discounting.
Customers traded loyalties often with greater choices and wider discount options amongst
FSAs.

Pricing during pandemic:

During the pandemic, Zomato has increased the delivery fees over the last six months,
introducing stricter order cancellation rules, dynamic discounting and hiked costs of their
loyalty programmes. It has also increased prices of Gold (now Pro) membership and began
cross selling at checkouts to hike average order value and by proposing side offerings.
Staggered delivery charges, depending on the distance restaurant and the order value. For
example, consumers have been paying somewhere between Rs 16 (the base charge) to more
than Rs 45 for small-value orders in Bengaluru.

In order to cut down on losses per order, Zomato began decreasing the discounts, the average
order decreasing 200 basis points since last year.

8
MARKETING STRATEGIES

2.Place:
Zomato, being a third-party delivery service with respect to restaurants, have been widely
utilized out of convenience, shooting the restaurant business to grow. 

Zomato is available on different platforms: Windows, Android and iOS.

Zomato is also focusing on Zomato Infrastructure Services like cloud kitchens (food courts)
in locations slightly off the premium locations where dine in is not available.

It has created a site Food Porn where it posts exclusive photos of exotic foods around the
world.

It is available in 25 different countries including India, Malaysia, Australia, UAE, USA and
many more. 

Zomato has partnered with Far Eye (digital logistics company) to make restaurants follow
FSSAI guidelines.

3.Promotion:

To reach different customers based on different personas and based on your purchase pattern.

Impersonal communication:

 Social media: Catchy advertisements and memes relevant to younger audiences.

If you scroll through its social media profiles, you will see Zomato adopting a
counter-intuitive marketing strategy by asking people to do something against what
they stand for. The brand has been going against the tide and challenging itself to
walk on this not so normal path of marketing, evidently seen in the Zomato Twitter
strategy. When we saw Zomato recommending ‘Ghar ka khana’ to people we, like
others were amazed and wondered what the brand is up to. Soon the tweet went viral,
spread like wildfire and Zomato – while a few took to trolling the others praised this
reverse psychology adapted by the app.

 TV Promotion: Targeted towards the generic public, TV promotions is a major

source for reaching customers for Zomato. Zomato runs a number of TV ads to

9
MARKETING STRATEGIES

capture the attention of different segments of the population based on their age
differentiation, gender, demographics, geography etc. Compared to other mass
promotion strategies TV ads provide Zomato a chance to reach the customers at
different times of the day with different content. This ensures that a large group of
people get to know about Zomato and their services. For ex: During the IPL, Zomato
shows ads catering to the needs of people being locked inside their homes due to the
pandemic and who are watching the match. This helps them gauge the interests of a
large section of our “Cricket frenzy” nation.

Personal communication: 

 Email promotion: If email seems like a dying phenomenon today, Zomato has
proved time & again that you can get those customer clicks. The company has done it
the smart way by leveraging its technology & data points. They have gone to creative
& innovative lengths to bring all the spikes into the customer’s mailbox. The biryani
CV was a brilliant idea to get the customers to have it all. 

4. Product

10
MARKETING STRATEGIES

Zomato’s product is an app/website which shows restaurants and food menus to its users.
Zomato can provide users with the following options:
 Images of the restaurants
 Menu cards of the restaurants
 Portal for customer feedback where people can voice their opinions regarding the
experience, taste at a particular restaurant
This application helps the restaurants which do not have their own websites. It is a good way
to make their restaurant visible online without making a site for their own.
The main services in its marketing mix include
 Point of Sale systems
 Restaurant Search and Delivery
 Table Reservations and management
 White label Apps and online ordering services
Zomato engages the features of all their products/services to give a holistic experience to the
end-customer, where they can start right from the awareness of a particular restaurant or food
item, order it online or book a table at some restaurant/food joint to experience it and finally
express their satisfaction/dissatisfaction via the app’s feedback mechanism.
Zomato also provides Zomato Gold (now rebranded as Zomato Pro) feature to it’s customers.
Zomato Gold is a member’s club, where the subscribers can avail discounts, coupons, invites
to exclusive events etc.
All in all, Zomato provides customers a platform which facilitates a premium experience with
minimal waiting periods, access (dine-in/online ordering) to a wide range of restaurants as
well as a place where the opinions of the customers would be equally visible to everyone.
Zomato’s services can be classified as an experienced good since customers can gauge their
experiences once they have used the app, and then can decide on it’s effectiveness. The
customers can experience the waiting time, amount of safety being provided by Zomato,
hygienic value of the food, hygiene factors being maintained by the delivery people, quality
and taste of the food being delivered, flexibility options being provided by the app like option
to cancel or reorder.

5. Process

Zomato has placed a number of guidelines for restaurants and their delivery partners. 
Guidelines for Restaurants
Zomato is a great way for restaurants to reach out to a vast foodie community. A few things
you should keep in mind:

 Keep your listing updated: While our team makes every effort to keep
information on Zomato up-to-date, we appreciate you letting us know when an
update is required. If your timings change and your listing is not updated,
customers arriving late won't be too happy with you (or Zomato).
 Don't solicit reviews: The best way to get reviews is to delight customers with
your food and service. Selective solicitation is a strict NO, and offering any type of
compensation or kick-back for reviews is unfair, so you definitely want to keep
away from that, too.
o Don’t ever offer freebies, discounts, or payment in exchange for reviews
o Don't offer incentives for users to remove reviews
o Don’t ask your staff to compete with each other to collect reviews

11
MARKETING STRATEGIES

o Don’t work with companies or third-party vendors/PR agencies offering

to 'fix your reviews/ratings'
o While conducting foodie meetups is allowed, reviews which come in
lieu of these official gatherings must carry a clear disclaimer which will
help the others identify that the review is based on an invite. That being
said, an invite certainly does not mean that the user needs to post a
positive review
o The businesses that do best on Zomato are the ones that provide a great
customer experience to everyone who walks in the door without any
expectation or encouragement that they write a positive review
o If we do come across any evidence (direct/indirect) of you indulging in
solicitation, we will activate a disclaimer on your restaurant's page,
informing the Zomato community that your reviews are suspicious.
 Respond to criticism positively: Take two deep breaths when you get a negative
review. Three, if required. This happens to all restaurants who have customers.
These customers are always right, even when they are wrong. Take the unflattering
reviews as constructive feedback and use it as an opportunity to fix things.
Whether you agree with the feedback or not, take the criticism in good stride. You
can reply with a management response to show you care, but please don't use this
as a platform to hit back or offer the customer an incentive to edit their review.
Your response can't be edited after posting, so choose your words well.
 Be accountable: Zomato will not moderate any questionable activities about your
restaurant posted in reviews. (e.g. serving shisha where it is not permitted, serving
alcohol to minors, or staying open later than permitted). Zomato may also not
moderate or delete any reviews where any third-party service provider is involved.
Such a review may be retained if it falls within our guidelines. This business
requires thick skin – stating the perceived attitude of owners or employees and
reporting of individual actions are not considered personal attacks.
 Don't entertain: Fulfilling the demands of customers who ask for benefits at the
threat of bad reviews or ratings, sends a message that this behaviour is tolerated.
Similarly, inviting users who have reviewed and given a low rating back to the
restaurant for a complimentary meal, invites false negative reviews. These issues
affect the entire community and require everyone's participation to curb their
prevalence. Please report users who engage in such activities to
help@zomato.com.

Zomato Employee Code of Ethics

Zomato's review and photo moderators are required to always act in favour of keeping
Zomato a neutral platform. They are required to use their best judgement in implementing
moderation guidelines and are prohibited from giving preferential treatment to restaurants.
Deleting any authentic review from a restaurant page is in violation of our policies. Similarly,
keeping reviews, which are proven to be unauthentic, is in violation of our policies.

6. People:

People Who Make the Products:

12
MARKETING STRATEGIES

As Zomato is a hospitality company, it has chefs, cooks who make food. On the online front,
the developers, product managers take care of the technology & visibility aspect. They work
on maintaining a clean & tidy website.

People Who Bring the Products to the Customers: 

Food is delivered after online order by delivery boys of Zomato. They follow a uniform
dressing style. The vehicles they use also have a banner projecting Zomato. All the
deliverables are taken care of by the technical delivery team. 

People Who Talk to the Customers

Zomato has an extensive network of customer care executives who take care of customer
complaints. The website provides an online platform to lodge complaints & get it resolved
through chats or calls. The customer care executives respond instantly & provide instant
query resolution. The delivery boys of Zomato also talk to the customer & restaurant leads
when they are in the process of delivering food from the restaurant to the customer residence.
The customer needs to give feedback to the delivery boys & this helps the company keep
track of professional behaviour & etiquettes.  

The Overall Customer Experience

Feedback is collected for various processes of the delivery routine. The customer can rate the
overall service & give reviews & stars on google play. 

7. Physical Evidence:

Physical Evidence variable is very important as it affects the young adult’s perception about
the website & apps. The design is user friendly & attractive. This is very important as it
strongly affects their intention to purchase Zomato Gold.

It also refers to the physical state of the business premises & the presentation of the website.
It defines their presence online. It is important to provide a clean & well-presented
workplace. It makes sure that online presence is very strong. 

Zomato provides a number of review websites. The hospitality industry can now gather
feedback from potential customers. Feedback is an important way to ensure physical
evidence of the website.

Other things which define physical evidence of Zomato is their professional behaviour. All
workers follow a strict uniform policy. Punctuality also provides process features. The
tangible display of menu items, photographs of food items covers up the look aspect. 

13
MARKETING STRATEGIES

REFERENCES:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/orders-go-down-as-
zomato-swiggy-raise-delivery-fees/articleshow/73650525.cms?from=mdr

https://bloncampus.thehindubusinessline.com/case-studies/can-zomato-continue-its-deep-
discounting-strategy/article29644907.ece

https://www.imarcgroup.com/india-online-food-delivery-market

https://www.zomato.com/blog/

https://medium.com/@bremipreethi/swiggy-vs-zomato-aae6ce45a77f

https://www.ibef.org/download/top-of-the-food-chain.pdf

https://www.zomato.com/blog/our-unit-economics-for-food-delivery-in-india
https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-mix-swiggy/

https://www.zomato.com/policies

https://www.zomato.com/blog/industry-report

https://image-src.bcg.com/Images/Demystifying-the-Online-Food-Consumer_tcm21-
238295.pdf

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.application.zomato&hl=en_SG

14