Zomato on Tuesday renamed its exclusive membership and subscription program Zomato Gold to Zomato Pro. However, the Gurugram headquartered company claimed that it has not merely changed the name but has also upgraded the program. The company said on its official blog that Zomato Pro will be bigger and better than Zomato Gold.
The company has announced that all Zomato Gold members living across 10 countries will be upgraded to Zomato Pro starting 1st August, 2020. This upgrading will happen automatically and members won’t have to make any setting changes in their Zomato app, according to a statement issued by the company on its official blog post.
Zomato has claimed in its blog post that it has signed up 50% more partner restaurants on Zomato Pro than it did on Zomato Gold. The company has stated that Pro members will get priority delivery, assuring the members of getting deliveries 15-20% faster (on an average) during the peak time.
The Zomato Pro membership equally comes with a money-back guarantee scheme. This means that Pro members will get an auto-refund of their subscription fees at end of the year, if members don’t save 2x the subscription fees of Zomato Pro.
The Ant Financial backed company is pinning hopes on its re-branded membership program to help the company to navigate it through the pandemic crisis. Zomato’s co-founder Gaurav Gupta said that the company is hopeful that Zomato Pro will drive the growth and compensate for heavy losses incurred during the past few months.
To cope with heavy losses incurred by COVID-19 crisis, the company had furloughed 13% of its staff last month. The foodtech major also decided to halve 50% salary across the workforce for the next 6 months.
Separately, the company is reportedly in talks to raise $ 100 Mn from Singapore based investment firm Temasek. According to reports, its earlier attempt to raise funds from existing investor Ant Financials has hit a roadblock due to prevailing anti-Chinese sentiments and new FDI rules.