Netflix to Zomato, online players sync with the law to woo customers

At a time when the online players look to expand share, the likes of  Zomato, Swiggy, Netflix, and Amazon, are entering an interesting phase of regulation to provide better experiences to their customers.

Swiggy and Zomato are working towards de-listing hundreds of restaurants that are not compliant with the regulations set by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) from their platforms to make sure the customers order quality food from reliable restaurants.

"We are in the process of delisting hundreds of restaurants, across the 34 cities in India where we offer our online ordering and food delivery services. Most of our high order volume restaurant partners currently have or have applied for their FSSAI licenses," Mohit Gupta, CEO - Food Delivery Business, Zomato, told Moneycontrol in an emailed response.

Gupta added that some restaurants which have not been able to provide their FSSAI licences but have high Zomato ratings and/or high repeat order volumes on Zomato – have been given time until the end of September to furnish their licences.

Zomato says it will re-list these restaurants on their food delivery platform after they provide their FSSAI license.

Help at hand

To fast-track the licencing process, Swiggy has set also set up an FSSAI Assist Program to help non-compliant restaurants procure their licenses within the specified timeframe. The startup has stopped onboarding new restaurants which don't have the food safety regulator licence.

While the move comes after the FSSAI asked leading food aggregators to submit action plans to delist unlicensed and non-registered restaurants, companies are taking several steps to improve food quality.

Swiggy has been working with Equinox Labs, a food-audit firm accredited by FSSAI/ NABL, on food hygiene to conducted audits at restaurants to ensure the food being prepared is in accordance with the hygiene standards.

Zomato has also launched a similar exercise — Food Hygiene Ratings — last year to educate its users about the hygiene condition of the restaurants. Under this initiative, Zomato claims to run mandatory hygiene checks accredited third-party auditors as well as follow the food safety and hygiene checklist before listing any cloud kitchen on its platform.

Online Streaming

The regulation scenario finds resonance in other online streaming applications such as Netflix, Amazon and Hotstar. All the three online streaming platforms are exploring a voluntary censorship code in India to cover online content, according to an Economic Times report, quoting three people familiar with the matter.

The scenario in the live streaming industry is slightly different from online food aggregation due to lack of laws to regulate the online content.

In 2016, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting had explicitly said that it does not censor online content, nor does it have any such plans.

Considering regulatory uncertainty, censorship flip-flop and court rulings that could impact their long-term business potential in India, top players in the video-on-demand (VOD) industry met to discuss the possibility and content of such a code.

An absence of regulatory laws confuse the players on whether the regulatory oversight lies with the telecom watchdog, the IT ministry or the information and broadcast ministry. This confusion has forced the players to lay down internal rules as well as follow ground rules such as put a disclaimer if a content is inappropriate for children and inform the consumer.