Zomato set to share customer data with eateries, Swiggy may follow
After nearly a decade of restaurants playing digital hide-and-seek with food delivery giants, Zomato is finally cracking open the vault—but only with permission slips from customers. It's the kind of 'we heard you' moment that comes precisely when the industry was ready to flip the table, with Rapido's Ownly already signing deals and Swiggy watching from the wings like a kid deciding whether to jump off the diving board.
Zomato is rolling out an opt-in feature that allows customers to voluntarily share their phone numbers with restaurants for marketing and promotional communications, ending years of 'data masking' practices that kept restaurants blind to their own customer behavior. The move addresses a fundamental tension: restaurants argue they need access to data points like order frequency, cuisine preferences, and location-specific trends to build direct relationships and craft targeted offers, while food delivery platforms previously cited customer privacy concerns. With the National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI)—representing half a million establishments—confirming final-stage discussions, and competitors like Swiggy exploring similar arrangements, this consent-based approach signals a transformative shift in India's $10 billion food delivery market.
