The National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI) said it will approach the Competition Commission of India (CCI) within 7-10 days to take legal action against private labelling by food aggregators Zomato and Swiggy. The restaurant association is also planning to provide workshops to small eateries in its efforts to partner Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).

This was part of the two-hour town hall meeting that NRAI conducted with its members in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Speaking to Business Standard, Sagar Daryani, president of NRAI, shared that the restaurant body will take any other legal recourse if required. "We have already approached the CCI. We will be adding to the current affidavit within the next 7-10 days," he added.

The NRAI also plans to have an enhanced engagement with the ONDC within the next 15-30 days. “Working with ONDC will reduce our marketing costs. Commissions will be between 3-7 per cent, we will have data of our customers, there won’t be pressure of deep discounting, and we can also innovate the menu as per demand,” he added. 

Adding that private labelling was the final nail in the coffin, Daryani mentioned that these concerns have been hurting the restaurant businesses for a long time. 

When asked if NRAI will ask restaurants to move out of Zomato and Swiggy, he added: “That is not our intent. We will also never ask anyone to forcefully log out. I think the option to log out or the push to the wall will only happen if we feel any one of us is arm-twisted.”

Swiggy did not respond directly to the issues raised by NRAI. “Bolt is redefining delivery of fresh and quick-to-prepare food from popular restaurants and QSRs in just ten minutes. The offering is only made possible by partnering with restaurants that excel in quick order turnaround, focusing on dishes that require minimal or no preparation time and restricting delivery radius to 2 km”

Deepinder Goyal, founder and chief executive officer of Zomato in a statement, said that Bistro is not a ‘private label’ or ‘Zomato kitchen’. “In the past, I have expressed that Zomato will never compete with its own restaurant partners. Zomato has fully backed this commitment by never opening a physical restaurant and will not use Zomato as a distribution channel for kitchens that we do.”

He further added that Bistro is a separate app, and its menus are curated using publicly known snacking patterns. “The Bistro team has no access to data that would create an unfair playing field. All Zomato data is available to all restaurant partners and the public through Zomato Trends.”

Zorawar Kalra, founder and managing director of Massive Restaurants and vice-president of NRAI, said that policies like deep discounting have negatively impacted the businesses. He advocated that restaurants should give discounts to customers who order/visit directly and not via the food aggregators apps.