India’s food delivery space is fairly crowded at the moment — Zomato, Swiggy, UberEats and Foodpanda are all aggressively looking to undercut each other, and hoping to grow their own market shares. But soon soon might have a new — and massive — player to contend with. Amazon is looking to venture into the food delivery business in India, ET reports. Amazon has reportedly held preliminary talks with Ola-owned Foodpanda for a potential partnership, which could…

Zomato can’t catch a break. After thousands of people had uninstalled its app and rated its app with one-star ratings over a Twitter post, its delivery partners in Howrah had protested over being made to deliver beef and pork, and more than 1,200 restaurants logged out of Zomato Gold, the knives with its own restaurant partners seem to be out in the open. Raghunandan S Prasad, an ISB graduate and a restaurateur, has roasted Zomato…

The days of the no-conditions, no-questions-asked one plus one on food and two plus two on drinks might be numbered. Zomato Gold, which is perhaps India’s most popular restaurant loyalty program, could see some changes in its terms and conditions after restaurants in Gurgaon pulled out of it, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal has hinted. “We are committed to work with the industry and make modifications to Zomato Gold which will result in a win win situation…

Acquisitions make the news when they happen — the press reports about the terms, the valuations, and the lives of the newly-rich founders. But acquisitions seem to make even more news when they don’t happen. BookYourGame, a marketplace to discover and book fitness centres, has accused fitness giant CureFit of acquiring confidential information under the ruse of acquiring the startup. BookYourGame (BYG) claims that CureFit offered to acquire it for Rs. 5 crore, but retracted the…

If something is too good to be true, it probably is. Restaurants in Gurgaon have pulled out of loyalty programs like Zomato Gold, Dineout, EazyDiner, Nearbuy and MagicPin, which offered deep discounts for dine in customers. Zomato Gold, for instance, offered customers one dish free with another, or two drinks free with two drinks, and Dineout offered significant discounts as well. Restaurant owners now say that they find that these offers to be financially unsustainable. “NRAI’s…

  Any  business in India, which operates even vaguely in the real estate space, seems to be grist to Oyo’s mill. After starting co-living spaces, coworking spaces, and even cloud kitches, Oyo Rooms has now started a coffee chain. Called The French Press, it already has an outlet in both Delhi and Bangalore. Oyo will reportedly open a dozen more outlets in the coming months. These coffee shops are currently being run in Oyo’s Townhouse properties,…

It had been widely expected that Reliance JioGigaFiber would disrupt two industries — by offering both high speed internet and OTT television, it would quickly take over market share in the broadband and DTH space. But after the announcements at Reliance’s Annual General Meeting yesterday, it appears as though JioGigaFiber will also disrupt a whole new business — multiplex theatres. Two of India’s largest multiplexes, PVR and INOX, have expressed concerns around JioGigaFiber’s First Day First…

“Food has no religion. It is a religion,” Zomato had nobly told the world two weeks ago. Turns out it might need to convince its own delivery partners for starters. Zomato’s Hindu and Muslim delivery partners are going on strike on Monday over being made to deliver beef and pork, which they claim hurts their religious sentiments. The delivery partners  have refused to deliver beef or pork during the festive celebrations of Bakrid or Eid al-Adha…

Trust startups to be the first ones to grab on to an opportunity. As the Indian government scrapped articles 370 and 35A, three-year-old fitness startup Cure.fit has become the first private company to publicly declare that it will expand into Kashmir. “We are happy to announce our foray into the newly created union territory of Jammu & Kashmir through cult.fit fitness centres,” said Ankit Nagori, co-founder of Cure.fit. “As India’s most loved fitness brand, we want to…

Tech is a fickle beast — the disrupters of yesterday might themselves end up getting disrupted themselves.  Paytm, which had revolutionized online payments in India, has fallen a long way behind Google Pay and PhonePe in UPI payments. In July, Paytm did 133 million UPI transactions, which was less than half those done by PhonePe and Google Pay — PhonePe did 296 million transactions in the same period, while Google Pay did 300 million. In…