Crusading India state food safety chief targets Eternal, Swiggy, Zepto in sweeping crackdown

MUMBAI: Maharashtra state’s food safety chief has intensified a crackdown on the food and grocery industries, suspending the permits of 12 warehouses of Indian grocery giants Eternal, Swiggy and Zepto after finding cockroach infestations and other unhygienic conditions.

The latest raids targeting the “quick commerce” sector, where companies deliver groceries within minutes, come after the state’s new food safety head, Tukaram Mundhe, 51, shut some of Mumbai’s most popular eateries for poor hygiene.

Reports of food contamination are common in India’s food sector, but Mundhe’s drive is gathering widespread public and media attention for his rigorous approach, as historically there has been little enforcement of food safety standards.

Mundhe’s department this week shut four Domino’s outlets, a brand that is India’s biggest fast-food chain and typically considered to have stricter safety protocols.

The state’s Food and Drug Administration said in a statement on Friday that it had inspected 86 establishments, issued 60 “improvement notices”, and suspended the permits of five warehouses of Eternal’s Blinkit, five of Zepto’s, and two of Swiggy’s Instamart.

Swiggy and Eternal declined to comment, and Zepto did not respond to queries from Reuters.

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Swiggy and Zepto have roughly 1,100 delivery outlets each in India, and Blinkit has 2,200, according to Datum Intelligence.

Photos shared by the state FDA about its crackdown on the companies showed rusted and dirty storage racks, with cockroaches crawling around food items.

The raids have put a spotlight on the $13 billion quick commerce sector which has over the years raised billions of dollars of foreign capital, with companies clocking 9 million daily orders.

On Saturday, consumers vented their frustration on social media about poor standards maintained by the companies, expressing shock at the FDA pictures posted by local media.

“About damn time. A city wide crackdown in all quick e-commerce warehouses is needed,” Nolan Lucano D’souza wrote on X.

At one of the food storage facilities of Blinkit, India’s biggest quick commerce company, according to the release from Mundhe’s office on Friday, inspectors found a cockroach infestation and rotten vegetables, and inspections at other sites turned up rodent droppings and unhygienic conditions.

At a Zepto warehouse in Nashik in northwestern Maharashtra state, delivery staff were entering storage areas in street footwear, raising cross-contamination risks, the state FDA statement also said.

A Reuters photographer who visited one Blinkit store scrutinised by the FDA saw cleaning and pest-control work under way, with trash bins outside filled to the brim.

“We will not tolerate any playing with public health,” Mundhe said in the FDA statement, warning of tougher action against unsafe food preparation and unhygienic food storage.