Zomato Adds Short Bio for Delivery Executives, Includes Feature to Tip Them

Zomato will now show a short biography of the delivery executive and will give you an option to add a tip for the person. With the two new features, the Gurugram-based company said it seeks to change social behaviour towards delivery personnel. The company, which started its online ordering and food delivery services in May 2015, claims to deliver 10.5 million orders a month. It is available across 17 cities in India, including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata among others.

The short bios of the delivery executives will comprise information such as their education, hometowns, and languages they speak. These will also include a line about their lives, families, and aspirations. Moreover, the bio emerges on the Zomato app after a delivery executive is assigned for an order and is on the same page with information such as the order status, summary, and the delivery executive's contact details and rating.

"These short bios work as the medium of conversations and remind our users that a person, just like them, is going to deliver their food," said Mohit Kumar, Head of Food Delivery, Zomato, in a press statement while announcing the new development.

Apart from the short bios, Zomato has added the tip feature to let you add a small tip between Rs. 5 to Rs. 50 to the order which is directly transferred to the delivery executive without any deductions by the company. The feature comes during the final stage of placing an order, alongside customer information, order cart, and features such as the GoGreen filter (allowing you to skip the plastic cutlery), and the option to expedite an order for an unwell customer.

"We want to give our app a human touch," said Deepinder Goyal, Founder & CEO - Zomato, in the statement. "There is a story behind every delivery executive that comes to deliver food to us - they aren't just a dot on a map that you can track. This is our endeavour to bring the larger community closer to each other, and also enable our customers to help these delivery executives realise their dreams for themselves and their families."

Zomato says that its deliver executives hail from varied backgrounds in the 17 cities in India where online ordering services are available. The executives use their own bikes and some of them are even touted to have completed high-school, while some of the executives are students who "are keen on completing their graduation".

The latest addition of driver-focused features is making Zomato a distinct offering against its arch-rival Swiggy that last week raised $210 million (roughly Rs. 1,431 crores) in funding led by Naspers. The new development also differentiates the experience from Foodpanda and Uber Eats that are the two other strong competitors against Zomato.