NEW DELHI:  Amid the extreme heatwave in the country, online food delivery platform Zomato on Sunday requested customers to avoid ordering during peak afternoon hours unless it is necessary.

"Please avoid ordering during peak afternoon unless absolutely necessary," Zomato wrote on X.

Due to scorching heat, some states have recorded higher temperatures than in previous years, leading to problems like heatstroke. Heatstroke-related deaths have also been reported in Bihar, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand, as well as in Delhi.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a meeting to review the situation of the ongoing heatwave in the country and the preparedness for the onset of monsoon.

The PM was briefed that as per IMD forecasts, the heatwave is likely to continue in parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

PM Modi has instructed that proper drills for preventing and handling incidents of fire must be done regularly.

Meanwhile, Zomato's co-founder and CEO, Deepinder Goyal has unveiled India's first crowd-supported weather infrastructure, providing localised, real-time information on key weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall, and more.

Called weatherunion.com, it is a proprietary network of over 650 on-ground weather stations. It is currently available across 45 cities, and the company said that it will be expanding this in other cities very soon.

The company has also opened up free access to this network (through an Application Programming Interface) to all institutions and companies in the country.