On Monday, Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal announced the food aggregator platform’s plans to deliver food in 10 minutes in select cities. This move was, however, slammed by some who said that it would put pressure on delivery partners. Following the outrage, Goyal defended the plans and assured users of driver safety and food quality. 

In a Twitter thread on Tuesday, Goyal wrote, “Hello twitter, good morning. I just want to tell you more about how 10-minute delivery works, and how it is as safe for our delivery partners as 30-minute delivery. This time, please take 2 minutes to read through this (before the outrage).”

The service “will be for specific nearby locations, popular and standardised items only,” he said, adding that the delivery partners are not informed about the promised delivery time for both 10- and 30-minute deliveries.

“No penalties for late deliveries. No incentives for on-time deliveries for both 10- and 30-minute deliveries. We are building new food stations to enable to 10-minute service for specific customer locations only,” Goyal added.

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The 39-year-old announced the 10-minute food service in a blogpost on Monday. 

 “After becoming a frequent customer of Blinkit (one of Zomato’s investments in the quick commerce space), I started feeling that the 30-minute average delivery time by Zomato is too slow, and will soon have to become obsolete. If we don’t make it obsolete, someone else will,” he wrote.

“Innovating and leading from the front is the only way to survive (and therefore thrive) in the tech industry. And here we are… with our 10-minute food delivery offering – Zomato Instant. Zomato will pilot Zomato Instant with four stations in Gurugram from next month onwards.”

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Amongst those who criticised the move was MP Karthi Chidambaram, who tweeted that it is “going to put undue pressure on the delivery personnel.”

“I have raised this in Parliament & have written to the Govt. Will pursue this further,” he added.