India's restaurants just won a four-year battle for customer data access from Zomato and Swiggy. But here's the twist: this "victory" comes precisely as the industry becomes more platform-dependent than ever.
While the NRAI celebrates phone number sharing, investors are pouring billions into QSRs and cloud kitchens—business models that assume permanent platform capture. With delivery platforms extracting 16-30% commissions and controlling discovery, logistics, and customer acquisition, data sharing is less a power shift and more a pressure valve.
The real story? Restaurants are betting that platform-enabled scale will overcome platform-extracted margins. Host Rachel Varghese explores.
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Business news is complex and overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be. Every day of the week, from Monday to Friday, Daybreak tells one business story that’s significant, simple and powerful.
Hosted from The Ken’s newsroom by Snigdha Sharma and Rachel Varghese, Daybreak relies on years of original reporting and analysis by some of India’s most experienced and talented business journalists.