Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal taunts NRAI president in a tweet

Deepinder Goyal in a picture sourced from his Twitter account

New Delhi: Food aggregator Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal took to Twitter on Thursday in a bid to embarrass President of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) Rahul Singh to stop the #logout campaign, for the "Gold" programme of The Beer Cafe. The move comes after a couple of letters from Zomato failed to pacify Singh.

"I welcome the NRAI president, Rahul Singh embracing the Gold standard at his own restaurants. Welcome to Gold, Rahul!@NRAI _India," he said in a tweet that had images describing the benefits that The Beer Cafe offers its customers under the "Gold" programme.

NRAI has accused Zomato of "unethical" deep discounting practices for its "Gold" programme. Goyal tweeted, "This logout campaign as it seems now, is driven by Rahul Singh, along with the participation of a few large restaurant owners, to use the NRAI platform to sabotage aggregators and benefit themselves"

Also Read: No big deal on food delivery apps?

Goyal tweeted, "Zomato is logging out of the logout campaign. We have said enough and we are getting back to work. I am confident better business sense will prevail at the end."

The NRAI has not yet responded to fresh claims by Goyal on Twitter. Zomato on Wednesday announced to immediately reconstruct its 'Gold' service to help drive better margins for the restaurants.

In a letter to its partner restaurants, Goyal said the company has put a minimum floor on Gold membership fee and will not sell 'Gold' service at anything less than Rs 1,800 for an annual membership. Here's what Goyal has said in the letter...

"The biggest pain point we heard was that users hop between places on a busy night, claiming 1+1 starters at one place, 1+1 main course at another, and 2+2 drinks at the last.

"To solve this, we will limit Gold usage by a single user to one unlock per day. This will ensure that customers complete their dining experience at a single restaurant, bringing the net effective discount down significantly."

"Going forward we are going to restrict the number of unlocks to a max of two per table. This will be applicable from September 15."

Earlier in reply to Zomato's letter, NRAI had said that it was not yet satisfied with the latest changes, calling the decision a "knee jerk reaction". "We are in receipt of the mass email sent out by Zomato to all member restaurants. This is a knee jerk reaction to the #logout movement and the meeting held yesterday between the founding team of Zomato and Management Committee members of NRAI,' Singh had said as reported by news agency IANS.

"It's a validation of the fact that Zomato acknowledges the deep discounting epidemic. However, the 'reconstruct of gold' is another attempt to stuff old wine in a new bottle. It's a tweak in the drug, which doesn't solve the addiction," Singh added.

Also Read: Mumbai: Zomato's Gold membership no longer viable

Edited by mid-day online desk with inputs from IANS

Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates