The Gurgaon-based company discontinues Zomato Pro and Pro Plus programmes and will focus more on loyalty programmes.
Zomato, India’s largest food delivery has stopped onboarding new members and merchant partners to 'Pro' and 'Pro Plus' programmes, the food delivery company confirmed to The Indian Express. The company had already shut down the more premium iteration Zomato Pro Plus earlier, and revised the terms of its co-branded credit card with RBL Bank.
Zomato offered discounts to its Pro and Pro Plus members when placing online orders for food or dining out. Zomato said that after their membership terms expire, active members won't be able to extend or renew their subscriptions.
In 2020 and 2021, respectively, the Gurgaon-based company introduced Zomato Pro and Zomato Pro Plus. The Zomato Gold membership option was replaced by the Zomato Pro programme. Pro members receive savings when placing online meal orders or dining at affiliated restaurants.
In a message to users trying to renew their expired Pro membership, Zomato says: “Thank you for being a part of the Zomato Pro program. The membership is unavailable for renewal as we are working on a new and better experience for you. We request you to check the Zomato app to stay updated on the latest offerings.”
Confirming the development in response to queries sent by The Indian Express, a Zomato spokesperson said: “While Zomato Pro and Pro Plus have been loved tremendously by our customers and merchants, we want it to be even more beneficial, especially for the most engaged customers and merchant partners.”
“We are taking feedback and working closely with our customers and restaurant partners to craft a new program. Meanwhile, we are not onboarding new members and merchant partners to Zomato Pro and Zomato Pro Plus. While active members can continue to get their benefits as promised, they will not be able to extend/renew their memberships once their membership tenure expires,” the spokesperson added.
RBL Bank and the food technology platform announced in a separate message to Zomato customers that starting on September 20, they would cap the cashback from purchases made on the app using the co-branded credit card at 500 in Edition Cash every day.
These most recent choices are consistent with Zomato's new approach to customer frequency development, which looks beyond reward schemes. In its earnings call for the April-June quarter earlier this month, Zomato’s chief financial officer Akshant Goyal said, “I think if you have to go from where we are today and meaningfully increase customer frequency, we will have to look beyond these loyalty programs and look at introducing newer use cases, which perhaps leads to a lot of the current offline spend on restaurant food moving on to our platform.”
The company reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 186 crore for the three-month period ended June, compared with Rs 359.70 crore in the March quarter and Rs 360.70 crore in the quarter ended June 30, 2021. This, even as its topline grew to Rs 1,413.90 crore in April-June this year, against Rs 844.40 crore in the same period last year.
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