Someone in the group chat just dropped a screenshot of a restaurant they usually only visit on a Sunday drive. The caption was one line: “Zomato says 40 km now.” That is the feature people are opening the app for this morning. Business Today, updated 7 November 2026 at 7:00 AM IST from Noida, says Zomato has switched on something called Limitless Delivery. You can look at participating restaurants up to 40 kilometres away, inside the same city, in seven places: Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune and Hyderabad.
Read the second sentence before you promise your flatmates biryani from the other end of the city. Business Today is explicit. The 40 km figure is the maximum distance the feature supports. It does not mean every restaurant inside that radius will deliver to your door. The outlet has to be participating, a delivery partner has to be available, and the app has to decide your address is actually serviceable. If the restaurant does not show up, the feature is working as described, not broken.
What Limitless Delivery actually is
Until now, the Zomato homepage mostly showed you kitchens that could reach you in a normal delivery window. A place you love, two neighbourhoods too far, often never appeared. You searched the name, the app shrugged, and you ordered whatever was inside the usual circle. Limitless Delivery is Zomato stretching that circle. Business Today says the point is access to more eateries, including restaurants that stayed off your list only because of distance.
The name is marketing. The product is a longer radius with conditions. “Limitless” does not mean another city, a highway dhaba 80 km out, or every cloud kitchen between you and the airport. It means up to 40 km, same city, participating outlets only. Zomato CEO Aditya Mangla’s line, as reported, is that the idea is to let you order from a favourite even when that outlet is not nearby. That is a narrower promise than the brand name, and it is the one I would trust.
How to open it
You do not need a new app. On the Zomato homepage, look under Explore More. Business Today says there is a dedicated shortcut there. Tap it and the app should list participating restaurants that can take a longer-distance order for your location.
The other path is the search bar you already use. Type the restaurant. Check whether it delivers to the address saved on the account. What you see depends on availability for that pin, not on a flat map of everything within 40 km. If you are sitting in Chennai and searching for a place in another Chennai zone, it might appear today and vanish at lunch tomorrow because no rider is free. That is the story’s own caveat, not me being cautious for sport.
The seven cities, in the words of the report, are Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune and Hyderabad. Delhi-NCR is written as one market, not as a promise that every satellite town inside NCR is live. If your pin is in a city next door to this list, do not assume you are included because the highway distance is under 40 km. The feature is city availability plus restaurant availability plus your address.
What 40 km feels like in these cities
Forty kilometres is not a cute “other side of the colony” number. In Bengaluru that can be Whitefield to parts of the south, or a cross-town order that used to be a weekend plan. In Mumbai it can jump wards that the local train treats as a commute. In Delhi-NCR it can mean a restaurant that, on the map, sits closer to someone else’s city than to your kitchen. In Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Kolkata it is large enough to pull a favourite mall restaurant or a home-town style kitchen into the app for people who moved neighbourhoods and kept the craving.
That is why the feature is trending. Indian food apps trained us to think in 3 to 8 km. A dosai place, a shawarma counter, a specific biryani kitchen, all had to be near the pin. The emotional use case is not “I want food from as far as possible.” It is “the one place that makes it the way I like is not in my service area, and today it might be.” Office crowds in Hyderabad ordering a Chennai-style meal from across the city, or a Pune student ordering from a kitchen near their parents’ old house, is the actual behaviour. Distance is the excuse. The menu is the reason.
The three limits the headline skips
First, participating restaurants only. A famous dining room can sit 12 km away and still be absent if it has not joined this longer-distance setup. Second, your address and rider availability decide the list. Business Today says actual delivery depends on the restaurant, your location and whether delivery partners are available. Third, Zomato has not specified whether Limitless Delivery orders carry extra delivery charges or different timelines.
Sit with that third one. I am not going to invent a fee, a surge rule, or a “90-minute” badge. The report says those details are not specified. When you tap through, read the bill before you pay. If a delivery charge looks nothing like your usual nearby order, that is new information from the checkout, not from this article. Same for the ETA. Food that travels across a city in Friday traffic is not going to behave like a 4 km order, even if the app never prints a separate policy. Packing quality, soup temperature, fried food going soft: none of that is in the Business Today piece, so treat it as a risk you already understand from long cab rides, not as a published Zomato spec.
Who should try it today
Try it if there is a named restaurant you already miss. Search that name. If Limitless Delivery surfaces it for your pin, you have a clean test: one order, one favourite, eyes open on the fee and the clock. The Explore More shortcut is the better test if you do not have a name and just want to see which kitchens opted in around you.
Skip the victory lap if you are price-sensitive and your usual order is a nearby thali. Nothing in the report says longer distance is the same price. A feature can be live and still be a bad deal for a weekday lunch. Also skip it if you needed the food at a fixed time, a meeting, a train, a kid’s tiffin. With timelines unspecified, I would not put a 40 km order between you and a hard deadline.
Restaurants are the other half of this, and the article does not speak for them. A kitchen that was happy to serve a 5 km radius may not have packed for a 35 km ride. If a favourite shows as unavailable, it may be the restaurant opting out, not the app failing. Do not badger the staff on the phone because a tech headline said 40 km. The headline’s own correction is that 40 km is a ceiling.
What I would not assume
I would not assume Swiggy has matched this. The Business Today story is about Zomato only. I would not assume Blinkit, because this is restaurant delivery, not a 10-minute dark store. I would not assume the feature is inside every Zomato build this hour. The report says it is currently available in those seven cities. App store rollouts can lag. If Explore More has no shortcut, update the app once, then take the missing button as “not on your account yet,” not as a personal outage.
I would not assume intercity delivery. “Within the same city” is doing real work in the piece. A pin in Mumbai does not get a restaurant in Pune just because the kilometres look tempting. I would not assume every outlet in Delhi-NCR, including the far edges people argue about on the internet, is inside the launch. And I would not treat Aditya Mangla’s comment as a promise of discounts, free delivery, or a guaranteed rider. The reported aim is simple: order from a favourite even when it is not nearby.
A practical way to use the first week
Open Zomato at home, on Wi-Fi, not while you are already hungry in a cab. Go to Explore More. Note three restaurants you recognise and three you do not. Search one favourite that used to say it does not deliver. Screenshot the result either way. If it delivers, look at the item total and the delivery line separately so you know which part changed. If it does not deliver, you have learned the only fact that matters: the radius is a maximum, and this kitchen is outside your live set.
Order once, earlier than you think you need to, and pick food that survives a ride. Dry starters, biryani sealed properly, pizzas you are willing to reheat. I am giving you that as a diner’s habit, not as something Business Today measured. The piece does not test packaging. If the first order arrives in bad shape, do not generalise to the whole feature. Try one other kitchen before you decide the 40 km idea is a gimmick. If two arrive fine, then you know your city, your pin and those partners can handle it.
For a lot of us the honest win is smaller than the headline. Not a new lifestyle. One kitchen we stopped ordering from after we moved, back on the phone, in Bengaluru or Delhi-NCR or Chennai or Mumbai or Kolkata or Pune or Hyderabad. That is the news as of this morning. The rest, the bill and the clock, you will see only after you tap through.
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