The food delivery giant Zomato delivered groceries during the first phase of coronavirus-induced lockdown in 2020. As the restaurants were shut at that time, Zomato had started delivering groceries, and later when the things returned to normalcy, Zomato stopped it and started delivering food.

But a few days ago, Zomato had announced its plans of venturing into grocery delivery. Zomato had started grocery delivery in 80 cities in the first phase of lockdown in April last year. When the lockdown was lifted, Zomato had stopped its grocery delivery services.

Zomato has acquired a 9.3 percent stake in the online grocery delivery platform Grofers. A few days ago, Zomato co-founder Gaurav Gupta had said during a virtual conference - "We are actively experimenting in this space and recently invested $100 million for a minority stake in Grofers with the idea of getting more exposure to that space. We are in the process of rolling out a grocery delivery marketplace on our platform on a pilot basis."

But now, a spokesperson of Zomato said that "We have decided to stop our grocery pilot and as of now, we have no plans to run any other form of grocery delivery on our platform. Grofers has found a high-quality product-market fit in 10-minute grocery and we believe our investment in the company will generate better outcomes for our shareholders than our in-house grocery effort."

The grocery delivery service offered by Zomato will be stopped from September 17th. According to industry estimates, the market for grocery delivery in India increased by about 80% to $2.66 billion in 2020 and is on course to reach $20-25 billion by 2025.