Zomato, now rebranded as Eternal, announced the closure of its 15-minute food delivery service Zomato Quick and its homestyle meal offering Zomato Everyday. The update was shared in the company’s Q4 FY24 earnings report released on Thursday. These services were introduced to cater to evolving consumer needs, but the company has decided to wind them down due to unsustainable profitability metrics.
The 15-minute food delivery service, Zomato Quick, was launched just four months ago as an ambitious experiment in hyperfast food logistics. However, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal confirmed that both Quick and Everyday have failed to show promising returns.
He said in a letter to shareholders:
“We are actually shutting down both these initiatives as we are not seeing the path to profitability in these without compromising on customer experience."
Goyal highlighted that India's current restaurant density and kitchen infrastructure are not equipped to consistently fulfill orders within 10 to 15 minutes. This limitation led to inconsistent customer experiences and ultimately made the business model unviable.
The lack of scalable infrastructure, especially in non-metro cities, hindered the delivery speed and quality, thus defeating the primary objective of the “Quick” service.
Zomato Everyday, aimed at delivering affordable, home-cooked style meals, was designed for daily consumption, particularly targeting office-goers in metropolitan areas. However, the demand turned out to be limited and did not justify continued investment.
Goyal added:
“With Everyday, we realized that the need for homely-meals is a limited use case largely for office locations in metros. We did not see enough ROI by keeping it running at a small scale.”
The discontinuation of these services is part of Zomato's broader strategy to streamline operations and focus on scalable, profitable verticals. By cutting back on non-performing segments, the company aims to allocate resources more efficiently and maintain customer satisfaction in its core food delivery and dining services.
Despite shutting down the two experimental services, Zomato (Eternal) reported a quarterly net profit of ₹39 crore in Q4 FY24. However, this marks a 77.71% decline from the ₹175 crore profit posted in the same quarter last year.
On a positive note, the company saw strong revenue growth. Revenue from operations reached ₹5,833 crore, a 63.76% increase from ₹3,562 crore in Q4 FY23. The significant rise in revenue demonstrates robust demand in Zomato’s core food delivery and hyperpure segments, offsetting the losses from experimental initiatives.
Zomato has clearly indicated that long-term sustainability and consistent customer experience will be key priorities moving forward. The company is expected to continue optimizing its core platforms, focusing on profitability without compromising quality.
The shutdown of Quick and Everyday suggests that hyperfast delivery and daily meal plans might still be too niche or infrastructure-intensive for large-scale adoption in India. Zomato may revisit similar models in the future if market conditions and tech capabilities improve.