‘Customers can withdraw consent to share their nos. with restaurants at any time’: Zomato CEO Aditya Mangla

Zomato CEO, Aditya Mangla, responded to concerns about the new contact-sharing feature and clarified that customers can withdraw consent at any time, even after initially agreeing to share their details.

Users can withdraw consent on Zomato contact-sharing feature

“Following up on my earlier post about our restaurant contact-sharing feature. One clarification that's important: customers can withdraw consent at any time,” he said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.

He explained that the feature was introduced to enable a direct link between restaurant partners and customers.

Zomato had piloted a consent-based feature which asks users if they are open to restaurants accessing their phone numbers, so they can “directly receive marketing and promotional updates” from them, per an earlier post by Mangla.

The feature also allows direct communication with restaurants regarding updates, delivery, and service issues. However, several Zomato users flagged privacy concerns as to whether the consent could be reversed once given.

In his statement, Mangla admitted that previously shared contact details cannot be withdrawn due to technical limitations.

“While contact details already shared with restaurants in the past cannot be “unshared” due to technical constraints, customers can stop any further sharing immediately by withdrawing consent within the app. Once disabled, Zomato will no longer pass on phone numbers to any new restaurants for future orders,” the post read.

“We at Zomato are in the early stages of launching a feature on the app which gives customers the option to opt-in to receive marketing and promotional updates directly from restaurants. If and when consent is provided - only the phone number will be shared with the restaurant. No other information will be shared. There's nothing sneaky or automatic about it,” Mangla said in a post on social media.

User concerns 

The clarification from Mangla comes after a few social media users shared concerns about their data being shared.

Milind Deora, a member of Parliament, wrote on X, “So, Zomato and Swiggy plan to share customer mobile numbers with restaurants. This opens the door to privacy risks and further spam under the guise of ‘better service’. We need clear, unambiguous opt-in guidelines, in line with the new DPDP Rules, so consumers’ data is respected.”

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