Cuddalore restaurants too shun Swiggy, Zomato; switch to Tamil Nadu-based food delivery platform Zaaroz

Ending ties with online food aggregator giants such as Swiggy and Zomato, the Cuddalore District Hotel Owners Association has now joined hands with homegrown food aggregator, Zaaroz, for door delivery of restaurant food to customers.

Most of the restaurants in the district stopped receiving food orders from the popular aggregators from Monday (September 1, 2025) and have now moved to Zaaroz, which only receives subscriptions from the eateries on a monthly-basis. 

Incidentally, in July, restaurants in Namakkal onboarded the Zaaroz platform that offers various benefits to restaurants, customers and delivery executives.

A spokesperson of the Cuddalore District Hotel Owners Association said customers as well as restaurants were badly hit by unnecessary charges levied by the popular food aggregators. Issues like heavy commission demanded by food aggregators besides heavy discounts being offered to customers without the knowledge of the hoteliers had created an atmosphere of mistrust between hoteliers and their customers.

Initially, a majority of the restaurants entered into partnership with the food aggregators. But the commission charges steadily increased to 20 to 30% since then to the point where it was no longer profitable to do business with them. Several eateries received hefty bills to the tune of ₹2 to ₹3 lakh per month and were forced to shut down their businesses. An analysis of billing revealed that restaurants were incurring losses. Taking this into account, the association decided to disassociate itself with these online aggregators and support Chidambaram-based Zaaroz.

How does Zaaroz work?

Zaaroz is currently operating in over 50 locations (tier 2, tier 3) in Tamil Nadu and has 5,000 vendors in the platform serving 8 lakh customers.

Screengrab of Zaaroz mobile application
| Photo Credit:
Google Play

Ram Prasath, founder and CEO of Zaaroz said the delivery startup only receives monthly subscriptions from restaurants in Cuddalore. “As many as 75 food joints have on-boarded with us in Cuddalore. Small eateries have to pay ₹1,500 and 18% GST every month while restaurants should pay ₹3,000 with 18% GST every month to the company,” he said.

Mr. Ram Prasath who started Zaaroz in 2019 earlier had a long stint in the Information Technology sector in Singapore before he started his own delivery application. The company is currently expanding to other cities and planning to open up operations in Theni and Perundurai in a week’s time.

“We follow a transparent model with benefits for customers, restaurants and the delivery executives. The delivery app is made for sustainable business growth. Presently, the company provides electric bikes to its executives and provides ₹2 per km as petrol expenses for those who are yet to receive the electric bikes,” Mr. Prasath added.