Zomato plans to increase participation of women delivery by almost 10 per cent by the end of 2021.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Zomato now plans to increase participation of women delivery by almost 10 per cent.
• The food delivery giant hopes to achieve this feat by the end of this year.
• Zomato will add women partners in cities including Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune.

Soon there be will no such thing as “delivery boys” because Zomato now plans to increase participation of women delivery by almost 10 per cent. The food delivery giant hopes to achieve this feat by the end of this year. Zomato says as of the current situation only 0.5 per cent of its delivery partners are women. The company plans to achieve the goal of reaching 10 per cent participation by the end of 2021 in cities including Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune.

“Today, we are taking our first step towards increasing the participation of women delivery partners in our fleet. To begin with, we have set ourselves a goal of reaching 10% participation by the end of 2021 starting with Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune. Adding more women to our delivery fleet is not as simple as just targeting more women for this job. That’s because our policies need to change in order to attract and retain more women delivery partners,” Zomato Co-founder Deepinder Goyal said in the blog.

Zomato has taken a few initiatives for the safety of the women delivery partners. The women who will be hired by the company for delivering food packages will undergo self-defence training, which will be made mandatory for all women delivery partners to attend. The company has added training to its onboarding process. All women partners will be equipped with a handy hygiene and safety kit.

To prioritise women delivery partners’ safety, Zomato will be making late evening deliveries contactless by default. A 24×7 helpline will also be set up for emergency cases. The delivery partner will get an SOS button on the app, which if tapped, will share the live location with the on-ground teams, central rider support, and other delivery partners in the vicinity.

The restaurant partners of Zomato have also come forward to support the company’s new initiative. Many restaurants will offer basic facilities such as separate washrooms for the women partners. Zomato will highlight these restaurants with a #GirlPower tag on the app to showcase their support towards an equitable society. In addition to this, the women delivery partners will also have the power to rate the restaurants on “ease and safety”. These ratings will be used to improve working conditions for all our delivery partners.

“Hopefully, in the near future, people won’t generalise this community as delivery boys, and see them for what they truly are delivery partners,” Goyal says in the blog.