Zomato’s Analogue Paneer Ban Hits Kitchen Costs First

Zomato on Monday delisted analogue dairy dishes from its app and told restaurants to switch to milk paneer or lose their listings. The food delivery brand, owned by Eternal Ltd, said partners who declared analogue dairy in a dish have already had those items pulled.

Aditya Mangla, CEO of Zomato, framed the rule as a health and labelling standard. The harder follow-on is commercial: the app is now doing the job eight state factory bans never finished, and kitchens will pay dairy prices for cubes they used to buy cheap.

Zomato Pulls Analogue Dishes From Delivery Menus

In a statement carried by The Economic Times, Hindustan Times and NDTV Profit, Zomato said it has adopted a zero-tolerance policy on analogue dishes, including analogue cheese and paneer, and reserves the right to remove any listing found in violation. Partners who stay non-compliant “will be delisted from the platform,” the company said.

The rule is national on the app even though the underlying bans are state-by-state. A kitchen in a state with no analogue order still cannot sell those dishes through Zomato. Swiggy had not announced a matching rule by Monday afternoon.

WHAT ZOMATO TOLD RESTAURANT PARTNERS

• Switch the ingredient: Move dishes to natural dairy products at once.
• Drop the dish: Take analogue items off the menu if a switch cannot be made immediately.
• Check the supplier: Review product labels and ingredient declarations so listings match what is cooked.
• Face delisting: Stay on analogue dairy without those steps and the restaurant can come off the platform.

Mangla tied the step to Zomato’s line about “better food for more people,” a phrase that now collides with the cheaper cubes that kept many paneer dishes at a budget price.

At Zomato, our core mission is better food for more people, and that means safeguarding customer health and upholding clear standards for what’s listed and served by our restaurant partners. This policy reflects that commitment, one we’re taking together with partners who share it.

Aditya Mangla, CEO, Zomato

NDTV Profit and Fortune India both noted the timing against Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration drive under Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe, which has already suspended licences at eateries. Zomato’s tool is cruder and faster than a raid: it deletes the dish from the only menu most delivery customers see.

The Legal Product That Could Not Use a Dairy Name

Analogue paneer is not a slang term invented this month. FSSAI defines an “analogue in the dairy context” as a product in which non-milk constituents take the place, in part or in whole, of milk fat or milk protein, while the finished item still looks or cooks like a dairy food. Analogues are not recognised as milk products, so they cannot carry dairy names.

The regulator’s own analogue labelling rules for dairy substitutes require “Contains …” when a milk constituent is only partly replaced, and “Contains no …” when it is fully replaced, plus the word “Analogue” and the food category number on unstandardised products. Frozen dessert, processed cheese and mixed fat spread already have identity standards. Analogue paneer does not.

That gap is why states and the Central Advisory Committee moved from labelling fights to product bans. Mint reported that the committee finalised a phase-out in October 2025 and adopted it on 2 March 2026, chaired by FSSAI CEO Rajit Punhani, with a transition for about 1,000 current licence holders. The document Mint saw said a choice between analogue and paneer “cannot be left to the discretion of the consumer, considering the awareness level.”

THREE WHITE CUBES, THREE LEGAL MEANINGS

• Dairy paneer: Coagulated from milk, with milk fat as an essential constituent; FSSAI’s standard, cited by Mint, calls for at least 50% milk fat and moisture not above 70%.
• Analogue paneer: Vegetable oil or fat, starches, milk solids or skimmed milk powder, emulsifiers and flavours blended to mimic the cube; legal only if it is not named or served as paneer.
• Adulterated paneer: A separate unsafe class Mint described as starches mixed with chemical preservatives and whitening agents, including hydrogen peroxide and sometimes urea.

On 29 April 2026, FSSAI’s West Region, via the Press Information Bureau, said any cheese analogue sold as paneer is a grave violation that “must cease immediately.” Manufacturers were told to name the product clearly when supplying restaurants, and food-service units were told to train procurement teams and put analogue use on menus or boards. Officers were directed to inspect all units making or using cheese analogues.

Dr Surendra Nath Battula, a retired principal scientist at the National Dairy Research Institute in Bangalore, told The Indian Express that analogue paneer is made by blending vegetable oils such as palm oil, vegetable fats such as palm stearin, starches, skimmed milk powder, plant proteins, stabilisers, emulsifiers and artificial flavours, then curdling that blend with ordinary acidulants. Correctly labelled, India Today noted in early August, it is a formulated food. It becomes a fraud only when the menu still says paneer.

Eight States Closed Factories While Apps Stayed Open

Production bans started at the state gazette and stopped at the restaurant back door. Cloud kitchens in open states could still buy analogue blocks, cook them, and sell “paneer tikka” on a national app. Zomato’s delisting is the first rule that follows the dish onto the phone.

HOW THE BANS STACKED UP THIS SUMMER

1. July 30, 2026: Maharashtra gazettes a one-year ban on manufacture, storage, distribution and sale of analogue paneer, and orders hotels, restaurants, caterers and cloud kitchens to stop using it, after Food Safety Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe invoked Section 30(2)(a) of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.
2. August 1, 2026: Chhattisgarh bans sale of analogue paneer; Health Minister Shyam Bihari Jaiswal says manufacturing units would not be sealed because most states had not yet restricted sale.
3. August 6, 2026: Gujarat prohibits manufacture, processing, packing, storage, transport, distribution, sale and use in food-service of non-standardised dairy analogues that imitate paneer, cream or butter.
4. August 17, 2026: Karnataka notifies a one-year ban on analogue or non-dairy paneer sold under the name “Paneer,” while leaving frozen desserts, processed cheese and mixed fat spreads untouched.
5. August 20, 2026: Punjab’s Commissioner of Food Safety issues a one-year prohibition on analogue or non-dairy paneer marketed as paneer, covering descriptions such as vegan, synthetic and plant-based paneer.
6. August 28, 2026: Punhani tells Navbharat Times, as reported by Business Standard, that analogue paneer has become a national concern and a complete prohibition could be announced soon.
7. August 31, 2026: Zomato delists declared analogue dishes on its platform.

Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have also acted, according to Business Standard’s round-up of state food-control departments. Maharashtra’s sampling is the hardest number on the record. Between April 2025 and March 2026 the FDA tested 308 paneer and dairy-analogue samples; 109 samples, 35.4 percent, failed, of which 79 were sub-standard and 30 were declared unsafe. Fat tests showed butyro-refractometer readings and iodine values outside the milk-fat range, a marker that vegetable fat had replaced milk fat.

Penalties in Maharashtra run from six months in jail and a fine of ₹1 lakh to life imprisonment and a minimum fine of ₹10 lakh if unsafe food causes death. On 21 August the Bombay High Court refused interim relief to a Thane Udupi restaurant whose licence was suspended for serving analogue paneer, with the bench asking, as LiveLaw reported, “Just for little price difference, you do this?”

Why Cheap Cubes Took Over Restaurant Kitchens

The substitution is an arithmetic problem. Mint, using listed-dairy annual reports, put India’s paneer market at ₹64,810 crore in 2024, with well over 90% moving through local dairies in unpackaged form and organised brands under 10%. A kilogram of real paneer needs at least five litres of milk. At ₹60 a litre the milk input alone is ₹300, and after 12% GST, transport and marketing the retail ticket can sit above ₹450 a kg.

Amul in August 2025 sold 200 grams of fresh paneer for ₹95, or ₹475 a kg, in line with Mother Dairy. Parag Milk Foods’ Gowardhan was ₹105 for the same pack, or ₹525 a kg. At New Delhi’s Okhla Mandi, Mint found slabs at ₹240 to ₹270 a kg for small restaurants. Vegetable fat can cost about one-third as much as dairy fat, Mint reported, so even a 50% swap collapses the kitchen’s ingredient bill.

WHAT A KILOGRAM COSTS IN THE KITCHEN

NDTV Food has put commercial dairy paneer in a band of Rs 260 to Rs 450 a kg and analogue at about Rs 150 to Rs 250. In March, The Economic Times reported Maharashtra’s dairy industry saying more than 50% of institutional buyers had switched to the cheaper cube. R.S. Sodhi, then president of the Indian Dairy Association and former managing director of Amul, told Mint how the cheap version is built.

Fake paneer can be made using skimmed milk powder, cheap vegetable oil. Some even use starch instead of skimmed milk powder to drive down costs.

R.S. Sodhi, then president, Indian Dairy Association, speaking to Mint

Mint later quoted a report in Bhaskar English estimating that dishes could rise by ₹20 to ₹60 once kitchens are forced onto milk paneer, with paneer butter masala cited at about ₹220 moving toward ₹260. Those dish-level figures have not been independently audited; they describe the direction of the cost, not a new national tariff.

Dairy Cooperatives Want Those Kitchen Orders Back

Every analogue block that leaves a hotel store is milk that was never procured. The Indian Dairy Association’s president’s note puts the paneer market valued at INR 648 billion in 2024, with a path toward INR 2,030 to 2,400 billion by 2033-34, and warns that analogues “divert demand away from milk, and undermine farmers’ incomes by bypassing the dairy supply chain.”

Jayatheertha Chary, managing director of Mother Dairy, called the CAC phase-out a “progressive step” in Mint’s May report and said paneer “is not substituted with imitations that can mislead consumers.” Sodhi, in the same piece, compared palmolein cubes using dairy names to “gold-polished brass or aluminium jewellery” carrying a BIS hallmark. Sudhir Kumar Singh, IDA president, said such products “do not offer the nutritional integrity of genuine dairy products.”

Branded dairies were already adding plants before Zomato moved. Mother Dairy’s then MD Manish Bandlish told Mint the co-operative produced 25 tonnes of paneer a day and planned to take that to 50 tonnes. Jayen Mehta, managing director at Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, which markets Amul, said the co-operative had 15 paneer plants and would make paneer “wherever we have milk.” Heritage Foods CEO Srideep Nair Kesavan reported a 40% compound growth rate on paneer over four years as the brand tried to put the cube into south Indian home cooking.

Akshali Shah, executive director at Parag Milk Foods, told Mint the hotel, restaurant and catering shift to branded paneer has been slow because “the price parity (with analogue) is not going to come down anytime soon.” A platform ban does not create parity. It removes the cheap option from one storefront and leaves the dairy invoice as the remaining legal path on that storefront.

Hyperpure Once Listed Analogue Paneer

Eternal’s least public business is Hyperpure, the B2B supply arm that sells kitchens their produce, staples and dairy. Eternal’s FY25 annual report, as cited by The Economic Times, said Hyperpure billed over 100,000 unique outlets, up 30% from fiscal 2024. In Q3 FY26 the unit turned adjusted EBITDA-positive for the first time, ET Brand Equity reported in January.

In October 2024, FoodManifest reported that Hyperpure was listing “Analogue Paneer” made from skimmed milk and vegetable oil, with milk fat replaced by vegetable fat, at about ₹210 a kg against about ₹450 for authentic paneer, after X user Sumit Behal flagged the supply into restaurants that then served the cubes without a disclaimer. That listing is the detail Monday’s applause skipped. A delivery app that polices analogue dishes is the same group that, two years earlier, sold the ingredient into those kitchens.

Hyperpure’s public catalogue on Monday showed dairy SKUs, including Milky Mist paneer at ₹324 a kg and a “Fresh Paneer” line at ₹317 a kg, not an analogue tile. If the 2024 analogue offer is gone, the ban still leaves Hyperpure in a sweet seat: the same restaurants now under orders to buy milk paneer already order through Eternal’s warehouse network. The platform collects the consumer fee for “real” paneer while the B2B arm can sell the pricier block.

The same-day argument on X was not a poll about nutrition. It was this supply-chain seam. One reply to The Economic Times’ announcement asked whether Zomato’s B2B division had been supplying analogue paneer to begin with. That is the right question for a company that now threatens to delist kitchens for using a product it once put in their cold rooms.

What the Delisting Does Not Reach

Zomato can only police what a partner declares, and only on Zomato. Partners who never flagged analogue dairy still sit on the app until a complaint, a raid, or a lab test catches them. Swiggy, dine-in menus, wedding catering and the loose mandi trade sit outside the rule. More than 90% of paneer, on Mint’s 2025 reading, never sees a pack or a delivery listing.

FSSAI still has not gazetted a national product ban. Punhani’s late-August interview pointed that way, and the March CAC note asked states and Union territories to stop licensing new non-standardised analogues, but analogue paneer remains a defined category with labelling duties in the 2022 FAQs. Standardised lookalikes such as frozen dessert stay legal. Tofu and other plant foods that were never named paneer were never the target.

Kitchens that comply will buy more milk. Diners on Zomato are less likely to be served an undeclared oil cube. Analogue plants that lived on hotel contracts lose a national pipe, and analogue makers who labelled honestly still lose the Zomato channel because the app is not offering a correctly named “analogue tikka” aisle. It is offering deletion.

The next test is whether the delistings hold once partners quietly rewrite recipes without rewriting invoices, and whether a second aggregator copies the rule or keeps the cheaper cube as a quiet edge. Until then the enforcement layer that actually reached the customer is a private menu database, not a gazette.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Zomato’s analogue dairy policy, state food-safety orders and FSSAI rules. It is informational only and is not medical, dietary, food-safety, legal or business advice, and it does not tell readers which foods to eat, which restaurants to use, or how operators should comply. Anyone making health, menu, sourcing or compliance decisions should consult a qualified physician, dietitian, food-safety officer or food-law adviser for their own facts. Prices, sample results, licence statuses and platform rules are those published by the sources named here as of 31 August 2026 and can change with new orders, tests or company notices.