Some restaurants in India are moving from Zomato and Swiggy to direct order services like DotPe due to their lower commissions and more access to customer data
Ahead of the company's $1.3 billion IPO, restaurants are moving to other platforms with lower commissions that provide more access to customer data. Tweets: @nilchristopher , @sub8u , @restofworld , @anupkaphle , and @peterguest Tweets: Nilesh Christopher / @nilchristopher : The revolt against Zomato Ahead of the company's $1.3 billion IPO, restaurants want to reduce the “unhealthy dependency” on aggregators and are urging diners to #orderdirect @restofworld @NRAI_India https://restofworld.org/... Subrahmanyam Kvj / @sub8u : Convenience is underrated till experienced. Ability to get tech right is overestimated till executed. Till there's a Shopify for restaurants, #orderdirect will be a blip on the radar. Platform advantages are real! https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... @restofworld : Unlike Doordash, the major food aggregators in India control fulfillment. Ahead of Zomato's billion-dollar IPO, restaurants frustrated by the steep commissions and powerlessness are pushing back https://restofworld.org/... Anup Kaphle / @anupkaphle : “Zomato and Swiggy are not the devil, they are not enemies ... But their methodology is questionable. India's restaurants are frustrated by the powerlessness they face from delivery apps https://restofworld.org/... — by @NilChristopher Peter Guest / @peterguest : The revolt against Zomato. As the Indian food delivery giant starts its IPO, restaurants are trying to decouple themselves from the platform and urging diners to #orderdirect. @NilChristopher in @restofworld https://restofworld.org/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The revolt has been building for years: back in 2019, Indian restaurants were already chafing at Zomato and Swiggy's steep commissions and discount demands (reported tensions between the apps and restaurants), and the pandemic only deepened their reliance on delivery platforms. What changed is that the grievance now has an exit ramp — direct-order tools like DotPe let restaurants take orders themselves while keeping the customer relationship.
The timing matters because Zomato is heading to a $1.3 billion IPO, making its take rate a live investor question rather than just a merchant complaint. The NRAI-backed push to #orderdirect frames aggregator dependency as 'unhealthy,' and it lands against a backdrop where India's ONDC initiative has struggled to break the near-duopoly after cutting back on discounts.
First-order effects
- Restaurants switching to DotPe pay lower commissions and keep customer data in-house, directly shrinking the order volume flowing through Zomato and Swiggy at the moment Zomato needs to prove unit economics to public-market investors.
Second-order effects
- Facing both merchant defection and the continued cash-burn pressure that already pushed them to explore other business areas (Swiggy and Zomato's diversification hunt), the aggregators are pushed toward defending take rates by bundling more services rather than cutting commissions.
- Direct-order platforms like DotPe gain a sales opening pitched on data ownership, turning restaurant frustration into a distribution channel for merchant-side software.
Third-order effects
- If direct ordering scales, food delivery in India splits into two layers — discovery-and-logistics marketplaces versus merchant-owned ordering rails — though ONDC's difficulty cracking the duopoly shows how hard disintermediation is when consumers default to one of two apps.
The trend: Merchant platforms worldwide are testing whether restaurants can own the customer relationship instead of renting demand from aggregator gatekeepers.