Online food delivery platform Zomato has started home delivery of liquor in Odisha, days after the service initially launched in Jharkhand.

As per the reports, the alcohol delivery is currently available in Bhubaneswar and will soon expand to other cities including Rourkela, Balasore, Balangir, Sambalpur, Berhampur and Cuttack.

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“We’re happy to be of service to our users in Odisha who can now use Zomato to get alcohol delivered in addition to grocery and food delivery,” Zomato Vice President Rakesh Ranjan said.

The central government’s move to allow sale of liquor during phase four of the nationwide lockdown led to serpentine queues and crowd gathering, thrashing all the norms of social distancing required to combat coronavirus pandemic.

This chaos resulted state governments to opt for online delivery of liquor. As of now, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and now Odisha have opted for home delivery of alcohol. Of all the three states, Maharashtra has laid out certain guidelines where the shopkeepers will be allowed to deliver liquor.

Coming back to Zomato delivering alcohol in Odisha, Ranjan said that the company is working very closely with excise departments to ensure end-to-end compliance to the safety guidelines and is also introducing consumption and identity verification protocols to promote responsible ordering and consumption.

Zomato has also built several safety processes and checks to ensure safe delivery of alcohol. There would be age checks at the time of ordering as well as when the product is delivered, the statement said.

Users will be required to upload a valid ID proof to be eligible for ordering which would later be verified by the delivery partner at the time of handing over the order. There would also be product category limits to promote responsible ordering, it added.

The service named Zomato Wine Shops would be available on the home page of the Zomato app and will allow users to select any product from the listed retailers and get it delivered right to their doorsteps, Zomato said.

On May 21, Zomato and Swiggy had started home delivery of alcohol in Ranchi and had said they planned to expand it to other cities going forward.