Flipkart, the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce giant, is actively preparing to challenge India’s entrenched food-delivery duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy. In doing so, the Bengaluru-based company is stepping into a fiercely competitive market that has previously thwarted high-profile attempts by global tech titans like Amazon and Google.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Flipkart is currently testing its food-delivery service internally. The pilot program has grown substantially, expanding from an initial group of a few hundred employees to upward of 8,000 internal testers. To support the trial, the company has deployed a dedicated fleet of delivery riders through its in-house logistics arm, Ekart. These riders operate separately from the personnel handling Flipkart’s quick-commerce deliveries as the organization lays the groundwork for a public launch.
Within the main Flipkart shopping app, the employee-only food service appears as a distinct tab. It sits alongside the company’s "Minutes" quick-commerce offering and its travel booking services. To source restaurants, Flipkart is leveraging listings from ONDC—a government-backed open network designed to connect online buyers and sellers across different digital platforms—alongside eateries that the company has signed up directly.
On the streets of Bengaluru, the southern Indian technology hub where Flipkart is headquartered, riders wearing jerseys bearing "Eat-in by Minutes" branding have already begun fulfilling test orders. This visible presence marks the physical manifestation of Flipkart’s broader strategic pivot as it looks for fresh avenues to drive user engagement.
Navigating a Growing Market Dominated by a Duopoly
As Flipkart expands its food-delivery operations, it is entering a market that is expanding at a rapid pace. Brokerage firm Bernstein estimates that India’s online food-delivery sector is growing between 18% and 20% annually. Despite this impressive growth trajectory, online delivery still accounts for just over 15% of the country’s broader food-services industry.
Meanwhile, Zomato—owned by Eternal—and Swiggy command an immense share of the landscape. Together, the two incumbents serve an estimated 85 million to 95 million paying customers a year, according to Bernstein’s data. This staggering dominance highlights both the entrenchment of the current players and the vast room for new entrants to expand online food ordering in the world’s most populous country, which boasts more than a billion internet subscriptions.
Flipkart is far from the only player attempting to disrupt the status quo. Ride-hailing company Rapido, which has previously mounted stiff competition against Uber and its Indian rival Ola, has been expanding "Ownly," its own food-delivery service that charges restaurants zero commission. At the same time, Swiggy has launched "Toing," a separate app tailored specifically for customers searching for more affordable meal options. Both developments reflect mounting pressure on the industry’s conventional pricing model and the steep commissions that restaurants are forced to absorb.
"Monopoly is bad, but duopoly is more pathetic," said Sagar Daryani, president of the New Delhi-headquartered National Restaurant Association of India, which represents over 500,000 restaurants nationwide. "What one does, the other follows suit." Daryani noted that restaurants have spent years searching for viable alternatives to the two dominant platforms.
A Different Approach from Past Failures
Flipkart is not the first deep-pocketed corporate heavyweight to attempt a breakthrough in India’s food-delivery sector. In May 2020, Amazon launched its own food-ordering service in Bengaluru, only to shut the operation down two years later. Similarly, Google’s Areo app, which offered food ordering alongside various home services, failed to gain meaningful traction in the market. Uber also exited the sector in March 2020, opting to sell its Uber Eats business in India to Zomato for $206 million.
However, industry advocates believe Flipkart possesses a distinct advantage that its predecessors lacked. Zomato and Swiggy built their foundational businesses entirely around meal delivery before eventually branching into quick commerce. Flipkart is executing the exact reverse strategy, utilizing its robust, established e-commerce infrastructure and expanding quick-commerce operations as a sturdy springboard into food delivery.
"Flipkart’s quick commerce benefit will get passed on to food delivery, so it will be leaner, more efficient," Daryani explained.
Beyond operational efficiency, restaurants are hopeful that new market entrants will drive down the cost of selling meals online. Daryani, who is also the co-founder and CEO of the prominent dumpling chain Wow! Momo Foods, noted that Flipkart has proposed a base commission of roughly 10%. In comparison, restaurants typically pay Zomato and Swiggy between 20% and 25% in baseline commissions.
When factoring in advertising expenses, customer discounts, and other promotional overhead, restaurants often spend between 40% and 50% of an order’s total value on the established platforms. Daryani estimates that Flipkart’s model could keep that cumulative cost closer to 15% to 16%, allowing restaurants to retain a significantly larger share of revenue from every order.
Winning Over Customers and Scaling Up
While securing restaurant partnerships is a crucial hurdle, winning over everyday consumers presents a separate challenge. Bernstein estimates that new market entrants might only save customers 20 to 30 Indian rupees—roughly 20 to 30 cents—per order by operating more efficiently. Analysts suggest this marginal saving may not be enough on its own to draw loyal users away from Zomato and Swiggy, particularly if the incumbent platforms respond by deploying deeper discounts.
Despite these hurdles, Flipkart’s timeline for expansion is aggressive. The company has indicated to restaurant partners that it intends to launch the food-delivery service publicly by the end of October, with plans to scale the offering to five or six cities before the end of the year, according to Daryani.
This strategic push into food delivery also unfolds against the backdrop of an uncertain timeline for Flipkart’s long-anticipated stock-market listing. Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy recently declined to provide a definitive timetable for an initial public offering, even as the company continues to aggressively expand into new operational categories designed to bring customers back to its app with greater frequency.
Flipkart’s wider expansion coincides with an intensification of competition across India’s digital commerce landscape. Quick-commerce platforms that originally focused on delivering groceries within minutes now routinely fulfill orders for high-value discretionary goods, including the latest iPhones, placing them in direct competition with traditional e-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon.
Flipkart did not respond to a request for comment regarding its upcoming food-delivery launch.
