: Zomato begins charging customers an additional fee for choosing cash on delivery, which may range anywhere from Rs 5 to Rs 20. India’s food delivery ecosystem has been bolstered by a few major players, with Zomato being one of the most prominent. Its service acts as a bridge between restaurants and customers sitting at home or in offices by levying some charges.
The decision comes as the company seeks to monetise payment methods amid intensifying competition. As per IANS, app screenshots showed the charge commonly at Rs 5, though in some cases users were billed Rs 7 or as much as Rs 20, according to multiple reports.
Though customers paying online are exempted from the COD fees, it is separate from Zomato’s platform fee, restaurant packaging charges and GST.
The COD fee is not uniform and varies by person, order value, location and other factors, and applies when the person pays in cash at the time of food delivery. No such fee has been introduced by the rival platform Swiggy yet.
Zomato’s parent company Eternal reported that in the first quarter of fiscal 2026-27, food delivery revenue rose 37% to Rs 3,100 crore.
These additional charges by food-delivery platforms act as a catalyst in the restructuring of monetisation models. Zomato, which already has sizeable revenue through millions of orders a day, can generate hundreds of crores in annualised revenue even through small hikes as low as Rs 5.
In March, Zomato increased its platform fee to Rs 14.90 per order, up from Rs 12.50 earlier, with GST charged separately. The move was attributed to rising energy costs, including LPG and crude oil.
The platform fee was introduced by food delivery platforms back in August 2023, with Swiggy starting with a Rs 2 charge and Zomato later following suit.
According to reports that came out in August, Zomato laid off around 250 employees in its latest round of workforce restructuring. The job cuts follow a review of the company’s customer delight operating model and organisational requirements.
As part of the restructuring, Zomato decided to discontinue its Customer Delight operations in Hyderabad and consolidate its remaining in-house operations at a single location in Gurgaon, IANS reported.
