Swiggy, Zomato’s predatory practices prompt restaurateurs to set up own such platform

National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) on Saturday said it has partnered with commerce platform DotPe to improve omnichannel sales, providing business-to-business digital ordering solutions fully integrated with a payment gateway because of its member restaurants and cloud kitchens.

Cloud kitchens are places where food is prepared and delivered at door steps by taking orders via calls and online ordering portals. Unlike other restaurants, they do not cater dine-in and takeaway.

Once the lockdown is lifted, the restaurants may use the DotPe' QR based catalogue and e-commerce platform for digital ordering which ensures minimal human touch, it added.

"I am extremely pleased to announce our partnership with DotPe for this critical solution for the Industry, which will be especially useful in the post-pandemic era. We are committed to take better control of our business and our customer data and become digitally more self-reliant as a business," NRAI President Anurag Katriar said.

"NRAI will be unveiling a few more industry-friendly tech solutions in the coming days that may hopefully change the contours of this trade and benefit lakhs of companies rather than a small number of digital giants," Katriar said.

On the development, DotPe Founder  Shailaz Nag said: "I am confident that our solution allows the restaurants to totally own the client experience, create their own digital channel for both online and offline ordering and thereby manage their expenses and customer data better."

By collaborating with DotPe, the restaurants will now manage to stay transparent with the clients by communicating with them directly through WhatsApp for all your online orders, he added.

That is being done, as in the immediate aftermath of #Logout Movement, the association realised the value to take larger control of the digital world within the sector for the long-term well-being of the fraternity, NRAI said in a statement.

"NRAI was worried about the trend of several key decision-making getting slowly but surely usurped by these new-age digital landlords," it added.

The logout movement was initiated by the restaurants against food services aggregators on issues such as for example deep discounting, customer data masking and other predatory trade practices.