Zomato’s Packathon 2025 accepting entries

Zomato announces the second edition of the Plastic-Free Future Packathon in collaboration with Startup India, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Government of India. The Packathon is a competition for startups working on sustainable packaging solutions for food delivery orders.

Open to all startups registered on the Startup India portal, the deadline for application submission for the Packathon is 10 March 2025. This year, there will be one winner for each of the two categories—solutions in the prototype stage and solutions in the ready-to-scale stage. The winner in the prototype category will win RS 10 lakh, and the winner in the ready-to-scale category will win Rs 15 lakh. Shortlisted startups will be given the opportunity to showcase their innovations to interested restaurant partners.

Shri Sanjiv, joint secretary, Startup India, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Government of India, said, “By partnering with industry and empowering startups, we hope to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.”

Speaking on the initiative, Anjalli Ravi Kumar, chief sustainability officer, Zomato, said, “The Packathon is a competition designed to help innovators understand the needs of restaurants and encourage them to solve for the food delivery use-case—especially the challenge of transporting hot beverages and gravy items—key features of Indian cuisine."

In 2021, Zomato made ‘Do not send cutlery’ the default option on its food ordering and delivery app, allowing customers to opt-in only if needed. This has prevented nearly 1933 MT of cutlery waste so far. The firm also voluntarily recycles plastic waste equal to the amount restaurants use for packing food delivery orders and has recycled 43,000 MT of plastic waste since FY23—about 1.5x the volume of plastic waste generated by orders delivered through Zomato.