NEW DELHI: As part of Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNibhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) Scheme, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Zomato to onboard street food vendors on its food-tech platform. Zomato is one of the largest online platforms for ordering and delivery of food in India, and this collaboration aims to give street food vendors online access to thousands of consumers and help these vendors grow their businesses. The MoU states that MoHUA and Zomato will drive a pilot programme in the initial period by bringing around 300 vendors on board from across six cities including, Bhopal, Ludhiana, Nagpur, Patna, Raipur and Vadodara.
MoHUA had entered into an MoU with Swiggy on October 5, 2020. These collaborations with Zomato and Swiggy are aimed to empower street food vendors with digital technology and facilitate greater earning opportunities. MoHUA is also coordinating with key stakeholders of the industry including, municipal corporations, FSSAI, GST officials to make sure that the street food vendors are facilitated appropriately for the initiative. As an additional component of the scheme, MoHUA launched a Mobile Application, developed in partnership with the Quality Council of India for ‘PMSVANidhi se Samriddhi’ to link PM SVANidhi beneficiaries and their families to various other schemes by the Government of India. The app has been introduced to assist Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in conducting door-to-door data collection to assess socio-economic profiling of PM SVANidhi beneficiaries, and the field functionaries can do so with the application even without internet connectivity. According to official sources, data collection has been completed for more than 95,000 beneficiaries along with their 50,000 family members as on February 4.