The NRAI had previously raised major issues like deep discounts, high commission charges, and algorithmic ranking in their letters to several restaurant aggregators. The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) on July 1 asked the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to investigate "inherently anti-competitive practices" of online food-delivery platforms Zomato and Swiggy, the association said in a press release on Monday. The restaurant industry body represents over 5 lakh restaurants across the country. "During the pandemic, the magnitude of anti-competitive practices of Zomato & Swiggy have increased manifold and despite numerous discussions with them, these deep funded marketplace platforms are not interested to alleviate the concerns of the restaurants," the release stated. This issue comes at a time when Zomato is looking to launch its much-awaited initial public offering (IPO). The IPO is expected to open for subscription as early as July 19, the Economic Times reported. What are the issues highlighted by NRAI? The issues that NRAI has asked CCI to probe include bundling of services, data masking, exorbitant commissions, deep discounting, price parity agreements, violation of platform neutrality, lack of transparency, vertical integration, and exclusivity of listed restaurants. "We have been in constant dialogue with the foodservice aggregators over last 15-18 months to resolve critical issues impacting the sector. However, despite all our efforts, we have unfortunately not been able to resolve them with the aggregators. The needle hasn’t moved much on these issues," NRAI President Anurag Katriar said. The restaurant industry body has been raising these issues…
