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We are largely dependent on food ordering apps. And, these apps charge a premium on the delivery charges. Deliveroo, Zomato, Swiggy etc have greatly scaled only because they could deliver food to locations on time. Apart from the addiction that largely drives these user base, 3rd party apps are perfect middle men making monies on one person’s laziness — You. While a majority of people are under the notion that its a win-win for restaurants, turns out, its obviously not. And, there are more reasons why. Here’ s a theory. Say, you are coming back from work, but it’s quite late. And, you know there’s one restaurant down 2 km away closing in a hour’s time, and you drive past the same way, would you place the order on some 3rd party app or make a beeline to the restaurant? Obviously, in 2018, GenXY millennial want someone else to do the pickup job. Lazy Goose! While most of the 3rd party apps have a rating system, if one takeaway is bad, the ratings drop, and less orders get placed. This is a classic thing happening around for a while, and some restaurants try to game this system, most fail to deliver orders even 2 km away from the location. And, thus its always not a win-win-win. Secondly, most of us have the very bad habit of working late. And, this is fueling the night life in the towns. While its perfectly legal in some parts of the city to booze, its a total lock-down in the night time in many suburbs.

Business is all about location. But, if you are a takeaway you can put a spot anywhere. And, who can help you with such location based data awareness? Another 3rd party app, with no relevance to your market/domain. And, this is where DATA is the new OIL. Many MoUs (Memors of Understanding) have been signed between many 3rd party apps itself, who harvest data to find patterns and analytics. And, since each of these markets are different, its complementing for a few investors to collect this data and secure them in a repository for future harvesting. Recently UBER was approached by a famous pizzateria and MoU was signed between the two for share user data. While this data sharing has been happening secretly behind the doors, in the age of social internet, we can’t hide things for long. Its really sickening esp after we have a leak all about how Facebook and Cambridge Analytica swinged the polls of many countries using targeted Facebook campagins, all provided by Facebook. And, they blamed the Russians. If one orders pizza from a pizza chain on regular basis and if that chain shares the information with his health insurance firm, then it will have some bearing because, the lifestyle is one of the key factors. And, they know your next doctor’s appointments better than you. Now that Facebook has WhatsApp, what more is feasible. God knows! It is competitively unhealthy for companies like UBER which has publicly exchanged user data with another colgormate. Consider the same usecase above. Now, imagine the many possibilities when a system could predict you are hungry, and limit your options based on your budgets, and provide travel and food at your cost. Did you realize slowly UBER has moved to driverless cars. Yes, next few years 3rd party aggregators will try to cut the costs by reducing the delivery workforce. They can’t get too messy with labour relations, and that’s something universal. If you are employing a lot of people, with a small pay and relaxing yourselves in some 2x2 cubibles in prime realestate of Mumbai, and never care about them, but focus your energies towards the next round of funding, you end up with a “unhappy” employees. Towards a zero workforce policy, companies spend millions to automate their process to save every dime and mitigate any future risks. In a country esp like India, where trade unions and slackness is most prevalent, companies face a lot of uncertainty. No wonder why B2C sucks in India. And, this is exaclty why Flipkart had spent 50% of their $6bn funding already. What are the odds tomorrow your 3rd party aggregator suggests you to you 20% off when you pickup your order as you embark the cab!…. One job lesser. More profits. And, now that the data has been traded, one can know which part of the city has the most laziest folks around.