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by IANS |
New Delhi, Aug 23 (IANS) A day after Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal taunted Rahul Singh, President of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), on Twitter and logged out of the restaurants' #logout campaign against the deep discounting practices of online food aggregators, Singh on Friday hit back at Goyal by starting a new campaign #ZoGoisNoGo.
"We thank Dineout, Eazydiner, magicpin and Nearbuy for rejigging their features to eradicate the deep discounting epidemic.
"However, Zomato has decided to cut all ties through a statement of their assertion of logging out of the logout campaign. From our end, that simply implies #ZoGoisNoGo," Singh said in a statement.
Although Goyal did not come out in the defence, a company spokesperson reacted: "We stand by our 10-point improvement plan that addresses the collective concerns of our restaurant partners while keeping our users' best interests in mind."
On Thursday, the Zomato CEO took to Twitter attacking Singh in a series of tweets.
"This logout campaign as it seems now, is driven by Rahul Singh, along with participation of a few large restaurant owners, to use the NRAI platform to sabotage aggregators and benefit themselves," Goyal tweeted.
"Zomato is logging out of the logout campaign. We have said enough and we are getting back to work," the Zomato CEO added.
Singh who is also Founder and CEO of The Beer Cafe, said in a rebuttal to Goyal's tweets: "Brokers cannot enjoy the same right as owners!"
Zomato has been accused by the NRAI of "unethical" deep discounting practices for its "Gold" prgramme.
The magicpin and Dineout immediately came in Singh's support on Friday.
Ankit Mehrotra, CEO and co-founder of Dineout, said they are happy to have come to a positive consensus with the NRAI and support their restaurant partners.
"We have offered to extend our loyalty management module of our B2B platform -- "inResto" -- at zero cost to our restaurant partners in order to further our mission of making every restaurant in the country to be tech-enabled," Mehrotra said in a statement.
"We are working with Dineout to create more tech products for the industry and encourage restaurants to embrace Dineout-powered reservations and transactions," added NRAI's Singh.
Anshoo Sharma, Co-Founder & CEO, magicpin, said they are excited that the NRAI has excluded magicpin from its #logout campaign against deep discounting.
"As a token of support, magicpin is offering Rs 3,000 of marketing credits to all members of NRAI and restaurant ecosystem for the next 30 days," Sharma announced.
Zomato had earlier announced to reconstruct its 'Gold' service to help drive better margins for the restaurants. an effort that did not go well with the NRAI.
The NRAI, which has been in the forefront of the protest against deep discounts, said it was not yet satisfied with the latest Zomato changes, calling the decision a "knee jerk reaction".
