Out of the cities where restaurants have been allowed to open for dining out, data showed Kolkata is leading the pack with 29 per cent of its total restaurants open, followed by Hyderabad at 21 per cent. Around 60 per cent restaurateurs said they expect to retain less than half of their original business volumes for a few months even in the post-Covid phase, the report titled ‘Indian Restaurant Industry – Mid Covid-19 report’, said.

However, the situation is much better for the food delivery segment, which it said, has “largely recovered” with the overall sector clocking around 75-80 per cent of the pre-Covid gross merchandise value (GMV). “Some areas in some cities are clocking higher GMV than before as affluent neighbourhoods no longer fear contagion from food delivery, and are combining home entertainment with outside food,” it said.

The data also showed a mass exodus of people from metros to other cities across India as one in every five Zomato users in metros (pre-Covid) opened the app from a smaller town. Zomato termed the recovery trends in food delivery segment as strong and estimated it to hit pre-Covid levels of business in the next two-three months.

Zomato said it has clocked 70 million food delivery orders since the nationwide lockdown that started on March 25.

“We estimate that between other food aggregators and direct restaurant channels, Indians have ordered 200 million times since the lockdown.”

The survey was conducted in the past few days after Zomato reached out to thousands of restaurants and customers across various cities in India to understand the current state and future outlook of the industry. The company, however, did not disclose the number of customers and restauranteurs who took part in the survey.