I am passionate about learning how different brands approach retention and marketing strategy. Food delivery apps always push creativity and marketing, and Zomato sits at the top of that list. Whenever Zomato drops a post, I pause and think, how do they come up with lines so fast? Turns out, I’m definitely not alone. Loads of marketers track Zomato’s every move because you rarely see brands that make people talk about their billboards, app pings or social media posts out in the real world, not just in marketing meetings. The humor, the timing and the speed are impossible to miss. 

But what’s really happening backstage? That never gets talked about enough. So when I got a chance to sit in on Zomato’s Head of Marketing, Sahibjeet Singh Sawhney, at CleverTap’s Clever AI Summit, I didn’t miss a word. He covered a ton: trusting gut over pure numbers, keeping teams tiny (and actually free to try stuff), learning fast from mistakes, really nailing personal touches, and using AI to make people better, never to replace them. 

Four things popped out to me. 

Copywriting is key for Zomato

Copywriting is at the heart of everything for Zomato. Just see how they sound: snappy, playful, totally local lines that can carry an ad on their own. Lately, even their delivery bags read like mini billboards. The newest ones in Rajasthan? “Can we padharo at your doorstep?”, “Any orders, hukum?”, “Call me bag-sa.” They borrowed friendly Rajasthani greetings like padharo (welcome), hukum (“ma’am”/”sir”), and the ‘-sa’ courtesy, and put them right on a bag, probably the most ordinary part of their whole setup. Suddenly, even your doorstep is part of the campaign. No need to scroll through anything or open an app.

The lesson for me: leveraging local language creates emotional recall. People remember a line that sounds like home. And it works because Zomato merges copywriting with creativity, so the words and the idea do the job together.

Those lines don’t come from one clever copywriter. Sahibjeet broke it down: the team sits together every day and tosses ideas around, wide open at first, narrowing as they go. Nobody goes solo. Maybe someone brings the start of an idea, and someone else finishes it. All together, they hit that perfect pitch.

Zomato is now part of Eternal, the parent company of Zomato, Blinkit, District and Hyperpure. In the quarter ended June 2026, average monthly transacting customers on food delivery grew to 27.2 million, up from 22.9 million a year earlier. Net order value grew over 20% year on year, after four consecutive quarters of acceleration.

The most useful line for marketers came from the CFO. If you’re in marketing, don’t get stuck on downloads and discounts. Zomato’s CFO said it best: focus on customer retention. That’s where the real action is.

Sahibjeet shared an awesome example from Raksha Bandhan, a print ad that started as playful Twitter banter in 2024 and ended up as a real-world ad, with Zomato and its sister brands together for the very first time.

Was there data behind it? None. They just went with instinct. In his words, “Instinct over data.”

Most of Zomato’s creative and marketing work stays in-house because honestly, no agency knows the brand, or its customers, better than their own crew. Sahibjeet credits hiring actual talent, building smart systems, and letting the team run wild with their ideas. New hires don’t just walk in and start working, they spend over a week hashing out creative sessions before picking their first project.

That culture shows up in the work:

• Billboards built to travel. Sawhney says he wants every billboard to be as good as “Kheer Mangoge.” “Doodh mangoge, Doodh denge” is among the most iconic. 

• The Mumbai metro stunt: Back in January 2024, Zomato flipped dry station announcements into playful invites for hungry commuters. It totally fits the city too, Mumbai’s second, right after Delhi, for chaat orders.
• Movie integrations. Zomato has been involved in films such as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Jawan.

• Cinematic storytelling. In July 2025, Zomato released a campaign featuring Shah Rukh Khan, A.R. Rahman, Mary Kom and Jasprit Bumrah.

That creativity doesn’t replace performance marketing. Sahibjeet splits budgets between brand and performance, spending extra on brand for new categories or getting the local flavor right. Creative work gets attention, performance closes the deal.

2. Humans plus AI: AI scales the idea, humans own it

This part’s wild, Zomato leans into AI, but keeps humans in control. Sahibjeet said it straight: humans plus AI beat any solo act. 

Here’s how they run it:

• They made a small language model trained on years of Zomato’s data, what copy worked, which themes popped, best time to send stuff, what to upsell.
• The system spits out copy, ideal timing, and what to cross-promote.
• The creative team can play around: request more, tweak things, dig as deep as they want. Humans make the final call.
• AI bots dig through Reddit, Instagram, and more, tracking how things played out.
• Root-cause bots break down why certain campaigns flop or growth slows.

People love to worry about AI replacing marketers. Sahibjeet doesn’t see it that way, the right human/AI combo wipes out everything else. Behind the scenes, Zomato has also been experimenting with generative AI across search, notifications, product photography and customer support.

Look at IPL 2024 for proof. Zomato ran AI-powered ads for restaurant partners, cooked up by its in-house creative team, directed by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, starring Ranveer Singh, Samantha Prabhu, and Cheteshwar Pujara. The team built the bigger idea, handled casting and direction. AI churned out thousands of tailored ad versions, something humans couldn’t do at scale, but AI alone would never have dreamt up.

If you’re working with a lean team, here’s your move: let AI pop out a hundred choices, and let real people pick the ones that fit your brand.

We spend too long asking if AI will take over marketing. Maybe that’s the wrong question. 

The better question is: how can AI make human judgment sharper, faster and more scalable?

3.  Personalization: The Data No One Sees 

Everyone loves Zomato’s wild creativity. But there’s a mountain of data powering it, clicks, transactions, dish preferences, price points, and way more, all tracked for every user.

One smart example: Zomato can predict rain down to micro delivery zones, then ping folks in those areas with a chai-samosa notification. They use data tricks for cricket too, they know who’s celebrating when their team wins, and who orders comfort food after losses.

CleverTap’s been part of Zomato’s personalization system for years. But personalization is about more than just slapping someone’s name on a notification, Zomato turns real data into stories. In their 2023 trend report, they shouted out a Mumbai user who ordered 3,580 times in a year. That stat became a social share, a notification, even a billboard. The Mumbai metro stunt happened because the team actually reads local data and acts on it.

Their basic playbook:

• Find something local: what do people in this city (or segment) order, really?
• Hit the right moment: a festival, a match, a lunch break.
• Keep the tone friendly: cheeky, never robotic.

4. The Team Behind the Lines, and the Process That Holds It Together

Zomato’s marketing looks effortless from the outside, but I came away convinced it isn’t an accident. Sahibjeet said talent alone isn’t the moat. Other brands have talented people too. What gives Zomato its edge is the system built around the team: the freedom, the autonomy and an environment that keeps people happy. The teams are small, and there are few approval layers. Creators, performance marketers and data analysts, whom he calls “engineers”, sit together and work on ideas as one group. 

The process is simple and repeated: jam on ideas first with no fixed goal, narrow down later, and after every campaign hold a reflection session to ask what happened and why. He believes the experience matters less than what you learn from reflecting on it. He also admitted the team doesn’t document much, and that this is something to fix. The lesson for me is that a good team gets better when the process around it is clear. If you want people to take creative risks, give them a way of working that is easy to follow and easy to repeat.

What other brands can take from this

If you lead creatives, give them real freedom. Let them take a shot. Back them all the way.

For the data and growth folks, don’t fear AI. The magic’s in using it alongside sharp human instincts.

Don’t just copy Zomato’s notifications. Understand the thinking, culture and technology behind them.

1. Protect your creative talent. You don’t have to go fully in-house, but keep the people closest to the customer close to the work.
2. Balance brand and performance. One builds memory, the other captures demand.
3. Use AI for scale, not for taste. Keep a human sign-off on everything that goes out.
4. Let data pick the story. One real customer insight beats ten generic campaigns.
5. Measure retention. If Eternal’s CFO treats retention as the key signal, D2C brands should too.

The bottom line

To most people, Zomato’s marketing just looks like funny lines and quirky billboards. Dig deeper, though, and you’ll see the system: trust creative people, use AI to scale their spark, and ground everything in smart customer data. That’s the playbook worth stealing.