Jubilant FoodWorks, which runs Domino’s Pizza in India, says it now uses machine learning models to calibrate its price increases.

“We’ve taken about 140 or 150 to 200 basis points of price increases, very calibrated through machine learning models, versus taking blunt price increases where we can — day parts, channels,” Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sameer Khetarpal said on the company’s earnings call on November 6.

Khetarpal was answering an analyst who asked how much Jubilant would raise prices as cheese costs rise. “So everything is on the table from a — to make sure we mitigate the inflation,” he added, referring to pricing, discount management and product mix.

Day parts are the time slots a restaurant splits its sales into, such as lunch, dinner and late night. Channels are the ways customers order, such as delivery and dine-in. Khetarpal didn’t say how much prices differ across them.

Jubilant applies a similar approach to discounts. “Using personalisation and data models, we have been able to target discounts,” the company said in its letter to shareholders. When discounts are targeted, the final price can differ from one customer to another. Jubilant hasn’t said which customer data its models use to decide who gets a discount.

MediaNama founder Nikhil Pahwa warned about this kind of pricing in a 2017 editorial.

Businesses with large amounts of data “might be in a position to reduce the consumer surplus in order to maximise profits,” wrote Pahwa.

Consumer surplus is the gap between what a customer is willing to pay and what they actually pay. Pahwa also asked, “how customised can customisation be allowed to be, and when does it stop being a benefit for the consumer.”

Will Jubilant raise prices again?

“If need be, we will — those experiments are always going. And if need be we will take further price increases,” Khetarpal said, referring to the company’s pricing experiments.

The shareholder letter describes the approach as “targeted, data-led pricing actions where our value proposition allows, while protecting affordability.” It doesn’t say which products or customers the targeted pricing applies to.

How has Jubilant’s pricing changed since 2025?

  • August 2025: Domino’s used A/B testing before raising prices. A/B testing means trying a change on one group of customers and comparing the results with another group. It raised the price of its Big Big Pizza and rolled it back after customers reacted. Management also discussed using AI for pricing and for modelling how demand changes with price.
  • May 2026: An analyst claimed Jubilant had rolled back a price increase in April. “I think our price increases are very calibrated after 14 to 16 weeks of strong experimentation,” Khetarpal said. “That will be very store specific and discount specific variation. We do a lot of this recalibration of prices,” Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Suman Hegde said, referring to the price difference the analyst had spotted.
  • November 2026: Price increases are now “very calibrated through machine learning models.”

In just over a year, management has gone from describing A/B tests on individual products to describing models that calibrate prices across times of day and channels.

Why is Jubilant raising prices?

Management listed these cost pressures on the call:

  • Dairy: “In the immediate years, dairy prices are seeing significant inflation coming through,” Hegde said.
  • Chicken and vegetables: Hegde said the company is seeing “similar kind of inflation coming across not only in dairy but even on chicken and on other vegetables,” because of the monsoon and the West Asia crisis.
  • Fuel and wages: Khetarpal said the Domino’s India team took a hit of 200 basis points from costs such as LPG prices and wage increases across states.

“They’ve been hit by 200 basis points of unforeseen unplanned costs very suddenly and — but they’ve been able to absorb almost 140 basis points with all the actions they’ve taken. 60 basis points is still sitting,” Khetarpal said.

“We’ll take pricing accordingly, as Sameer said, in a calibrated manner to mitigate it and manage our gross margins effectively,” Hegde said.

“I’m hoping at some point the war will end and the oil prices will come back and we will enjoy these margins. If not, we have more levers in our pocket that we will pull and get that without hurting the growth,” Khetarpal said, referring to the West Asia conflict.

Better deals for dine-in and takeaway customers

“We have to give disproportionate value for customers who come in, carry out or eat in over there versus delivery. And with — over the years, that piece has been diluted and we are therefore taking those corrective actions,” Khetarpal said, referring to the extra value Domino’s offers customers in its stores.

Jubilant is doing this in three ways:

  • In-store deals: The shareholder letter lists “My Meal at Rs. 119 and best-deals ever available only in store for take-away.”
  • Store refurbishments: Jubilant is refurbishing about 400 stores. “These are not major changes, these are more front-of-the-house changes,” Khetarpal said.
  • Local marketing: Restaurant managers reach “the local condominiums or households through technology-led local store marketing or CRM-led local store marketing,” Khetarpal said. CRM stands for customer relationship management.

Because some deals are available only in store, a takeaway customer and a delivery customer can pay different amounts for the same order.

Revenue from dine-in and takeaway grew 2.4% in the quarter. “I don’t want dine-in takeaway to be a headwind,” Khetarpal said. “If we can add whatever 1%-2% to LFL, it’ll just completely change the growth trajectory and also the margin profile of the company,” he added. LFL, or like-for-like growth, measures sales growth at stores opened for over a year.

How does the Domino’s app compete with Zomato and Swiggy?

“We will always be a functional brand, we will always be delivery-focused,” Khetarpal said.

Jubilant has positioned its own app against Zomato and Swiggy, which add platform and delivery fees on top of restaurant prices. “I’m dead against that,” Khetarpal said in August 2025, referring to platform fees. “Our own app is growing for a reason, because we kept it simple,” he said then.

Domino’s also sells through Zomato and Swiggy. Jubilant hasn’t said whether its models price items differently there.

The delivery numbers:

  • Delivery share: 75.8% of Domino’s India revenue in the quarter.
  • App users: Jubilant’s apps for Domino’s, Popeyes and Hong’s Kitchen have about 6 million monthly transacting users.
  • User growth: Active users grew about 25% while transacting users grew about 9%, an analyst pointed out on the call.

Khetarpal said new customers take longer to convert. “But we are not seeing drop in the long-term value of customers,” he said, referring to the gap between the two growth rates.

“India would do roughly 5 to 6 million deliveries in a day, China will do 90 million deliveries in a day,” he said, referring to room for growth in online delivery.

What else does Jubilant use customer data for?

  • New stores: “The store that we open, high street stores we are opening, we leverage the database that we have within the terms of delivery dense areas,” Khetarpal said, referring to how Jubilant selects locations for new stores.
  • Ads: Domino’s sells ad space in its app to brands such as Apple and Airtel. “We have built a strong tech foundation where we can target by a zip code in India,” Khetarpal said in February.
  • Refund claims: The chatbot on the customer app “now uses AI to identify invalid refund claims and customer order outliers,” the shareholder letter says.
  • Stores: Jubilant is “expanding our AI-enabled surveillance to strengthen compliance across key areas,” the letter says.
  • Staff costs: At Popeyes, the company is “deploying technology to look at our manpower cost inside the store,” Khetarpal said.

Jubilant hasn’t said whether the same customer data also feeds its pricing and discount models.

Other numbers from the quarter

  • Domino’s India: Like-for-like growth rose to 4.1%, from 2.5% in April to June.
  • Popeyes: Like-for-like growth was 53% and revenue rose 122%. “We have about 100 stores, we know where to put the next 150, which takes us to a INR1,000 crore kind of a run rate business or more than that,” Khetarpal said.
  • Results: Consolidated revenue rose 11.8% to Rs 2,608 crore. Consolidated profit from continuing operations was Rs 113.9 crore.

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