Now, Ola will lock horns with Zomato for 10-minute food delivery

After Zomato’s 10-minute food delivery announcement last month, ride-hailing giant Ola has now entered the fray with the company piloting the services in select pin codes of Bengaluru and Gurugram. Ola has already begun servicing the instant food delivery services in some areas for a while now. The 10-minute food delivery is being done through Ola Dash, which is the recently announced quick commerce initiative by the Bhavish Aggarwal-led firm.

The Ola spokesperson confirmed the development that the ride-hailing giant has been piloting its quick food delivery in some cities, although without divulging more details. And in order to do this, Ola Dash’s dark stores network seems to be the key when it comes to the new instant-food delivery model.

The company had said in an earlier statement that Dash is focused on 'store-to-door' 10-minute delivery service, currently spread across 200 dark stores, offering an assortment of more than 2,500 stock keeping units. The company said that it aims to grow the business, taking the order size to more than 500,000 per day by the year end.

Earlier, food delivery major Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal, while announcing the firm's 10-minite delivery option, had said that the fulfillment of company’s delivery promise will rely on its dense finishing stations' network, located in close proximity to the high-demand customer neighbourhood. Zomato can also its extensive tie-ups with cloud kitchens, algorithms based on most-demanded food items, and can leverage its hyperlocal presence in order to drive its 10-minute delivery segment, reasons experts believe it could have an advantage over a new entrant like Ola when it comes to instant food delivery.

Zomato also recently announced an acquisition of 16.66 per cent stake in the food robotics start-up Mukunda Foods for $5 million, all with an aim to further its quick food delivery ambitions.

Mukunda Foods calls itself a food robotics company that designs and manufactures products that automate the cooking processes for QSR and cloud kitchens. These products enable restaurants to scale rapidly while maintaining consistency in food quality and customer experience across multiple outlets. Mukunda also helps restaurants become more efficient by reducing manpower costs and wastage.