The launch of Zomato Nugget might seem similar to Amazon’s opening up of Amazon Web Services but it will not be easy for the former to make a big mark in the space, say experts.
Last month, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal announced the launch of Nugget as an AI-native, no-code customer support platform designed to help businesses scale their operations efficiently. He said it was initially developed for internal use only.
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AWS was also initially developed as an internal tool and opened up for others much later in early 2000s. In 2024, AWS sales crossed the $100 billion mark and accounted for the company’s over 70% of profits.
Experts point out, Zomato has the advantage of knowing the market as it handles around 15 million customer interactions. However, Aakash Agrawal, Associate Director – Digital & New-age business, Anand Rathi Investment Banking feels it will not not going to be easy for Zomato to break in. According to him, companies who have businesses overlapping that of Zomato’s, like Swiggy and Delhivery, would not be very comfortable sharing their data.
“Zomato will be competing with every customer support solution provider who is also going to provide outcome-based pricing and leverage AI,” said a partner at a Delhi-based consulting firm.
Agrawal added that it would also be a major challenge to compete with bigger players like Salesforce and Freshworks who have better ecosystem and integrations with other platforms like Google. “At some point Nugget will have to do that,” he said.
However, the timing of Zomato’s entry into this space seems to be right. According to industry estimates, the AI-led customer support market is likely to double in size and touch $80 billion in the next 5-6 years.
In a recent interview with FE, Joe Atkinson, chief AI officer at PwC, had said that agentic frameworks – autonomous agents designed to perform specific tasks – would be the next big leap for AI.
Experts suggest that Nugget would be useful for companies in logistics, e-commerce and travel businesses, where high-frequency real-time queries need to be resolved.
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“These demand quick resolution and will not have any overlaps with Zomato,”
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