Gurugram:India’s leading food delivery platform Zomato is now aiming to differentiate itself by advocating for healthy takeout choices- through a ‘Healthy Mode’ AI-powered feature that ranks restaurant dishes using AI and the dish’s ingredients. Currently live in Gurugram, the company is expected to roll out this feature nationally in the coming days.
This move comes at a time when ordering from Zomato has become a convenient solution for those who don’t want to make the effort of cooking their own meals- which are mostly cheaper and more nutritious than restaurant-ordered ones.
Rising urbanization, poor work-life balance and a lack of social skills have forced many professionals to depend on food delivery platforms like Zomato and Swiggy for their meals, with many people ordering through these platforms due to sheer laziness to cook themselves.
Most of these are impulse purchases, and Zomato is well known to use dark marketing tactics to get you to place your order. Now that it is present in nearly every small town we can think of, the company has repeatedly faced criticism for promoting unhealthy food in partnership with restaurants on its platform- and the ‘Healthy Mode’ toggle seems to offer its customers a way out.
Zomato aims to build on its earlier efforts in 2024, when it suggested healthier alternatives to users just before checkout. Back then, this was mostly a pilot project that people didn’t take that seriously.
This time, the Deepinder Goyal-led company seems to be taking this initiative quite seriously, with Deepinder saying he intends to fix the unintended health challenges that came with the convenience Zomato has been known for.
“We made eating out and ordering in easier than ever, but we never really helped people truly eat better. Yes, you could find a salad or a smoothie bowl, but the truth is, if you wanted to eat genuinely nourishing food, Zomato didn’t make it easy.
That weighed on me, because when we say our mission is “better food for more people”, the “better” has to mean something deeper,” he posted on X, while announcing the feature on September 28.
For years, there’s been something about Zomato that made me uneasy.
We made eating out and ordering in easier than ever, but we never really helped people truly eat better. Yes, you could find a salad or a smoothie bowl, but the truth is, if you wanted to eat genuinely… pic.twitter.com/zBmnI1c0th
— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) September 29, 2025
This should be a step in the right direction- for the customers at least. But for the 3 lakh plus restaurants listed on the platform, this could be a death knell, as many depend on the platform to earn consistent revenues over the years. Deepinder is walking on egg shells here, and he can’t afford the restaurants to ditch him, or the customers for that matter, or he’ll lose everything he has worked so hard for. How will turn out then? Lets wait and watch!
