Zomato de-lists non-compliant restaurants from food delivery marketplace

In a statement, company CEO Deepinder Goyal said, "Starting  today, we are de-listing hundreds of restaurants from our food ordering platform for not being compliant to Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) regulations."

He said, "These restaurants were not able to furnish an FSSAI license to Zomato. As you must know by now, we take hygiene very seriously; so much so we introduced Food Hygiene Ratings last year; an initiative that is being embraced by the restaurant community. For us, it’s a matter of taking the right call because at the end of the day, the wellbeing of our users matter immensely to us."

Goyal said when these restaurants provide Zomato with their FSSAI licenses, the company will enable them for online ordering services.

Some restaurants who were not able to furnish their FSSAI licenses have high Zomato ratings and/or high repeat order volumes on Zomato.

"We have given them until the end of this month to furnish their licenses to us," Goyal stated.

"The de-listing of restaurants happened thanks to our collaborative effort  with FSSAI. Along with FSSAI, Zomato is a guardian of users and the restaurant industry. As a result, FSSAI and Zomato have worked together to take strict actions in the interest of public health," said he.

Goyal said his company is going to make sure that it doesn't list any cloud kitchen on Zomato unless and until it goes through our mandatory hygiene check, which is a food safety and hygiene checklist.

This hygiene check is conducted by reputed third parties who are experts at this, said he.