Zomato launches bags with 'hotline' numbers to report rash driving by delivery partners

Founder Deepinder Goyal had, in August, promised to roll out such bags to curb rash driving by delivery partners

Online food delivery platform Zomato has started rolling out delivery bags with "hotline phone number" to report rash driving by its delivery partners, company founder Deepinder Goyal said on Wednesday.

In August at the company's annual general meeting, he had said that Zomato would put a phone number on the bags of its delivery partners for people to call and report if any one of them were found to be speeding.

"As promised earlier, we have started rolling out delivery bags which mention a hotline phone number to report rash driving by our delivery partners," Goyal said in a post on Twitter.

He further asserted, "Please remember – we don't incentivise our delivery partners for on-time deliveries, nor do we penalise them for late ones. We don't even tell them what the estimated delivery time is – if someone is speeding, it is of their own accord. Please help us make the traffic on our roads saner."

When Zomato announced plans to start instant 10-minute delivery in March this year, it had faced criticism from different quarters over road safety of its delivery partners and possibility of pressure put on them to meet the deadline.

Goyal had, however, said the company was not putting any pressure on its delivery partners to deliver food faster but would achieve the target by relying on a dense finishing stations' network, located in close proximity to high-demand customer neighbourhoods.