Flipkart, the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce titan, is gearing up for a high-stakes entry into India’s food-delivery market, preparing to go head-to-head with the entrenched duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy. The Bengaluru-based company is stepping into a fiercely competitive battlefield that has famously defeated previous expansion attempts by global heavyweights like Amazon and Google, testing its new capabilities as it evaluates a broader public rollout.
According to people familiar with the matter, Flipkart has significantly scaled up internal testing of its food-delivery service, expanding the trial from just a few hundred corporate employees to upwards of 8,000 users. To support this operational buildup, the company has deployed a dedicated fleet of delivery riders through its logistics arm, Ekart. These personnel operate separately from the couriers handling Flipkart’s quick-commerce operations, signaling a serious and structured approach to the venture as a public launch draws near.
The employee-only testing phase manifests as a distinct tab embedded directly within Flipkart’s primary shopping application, sitting alongside its "Minutes" quick-commerce offering and travel booking features. The underlying restaurant supply for this initiative is being sourced through a dual strategy: integrating eateries listed on ONDC, the government-backed open network designed to seamlessly connect online buyers and sellers across diverse digital platforms, alongside restaurants that Flipkart has signed up directly.
On the streets of Bengaluru, the southern technology hub where Flipkart is headquartered, observers have already spotted riders wearing distinctive jerseys bearing "Eat-in by Minutes" branding as they actively fulfill test orders.
The broader market dynamics reveal why Flipkart is targeting this sector despite the risks. Data from brokerage firm Bernstein estimates that India’s food-delivery market is expanding at an impressive annual rate of 18% to 20%. Nevertheless, online delivery still accounts for a modest share, representing just over 15% of the country’s expansive broader food-services industry. Zomato—owned by Eternal—and Swiggy command immense market power, collectively serving an estimated 85 million to 95 million paying customers annually, according to Bernstein figures. This dominance highlights both the immense barriers to entry and the vast room for growth available to newcomers looking to capture market share in the world’s most populous nation, which boasts more than a billion internet subscriptions.
Flipkart is not alone in attempting to disrupt the established order. Ride-hailing firm Rapido, which has previously mounted stiff competition against Uber and domestic rival Ola, has been actively testing "Ownly," its own food-delivery service structured around charging restaurants a zero-commission model. Simultaneously, Swiggy has rolled out "Toing," a separate app specifically targeted at cost-conscious consumers seeking more affordable meal options. These concurrent moves underscore mounting industry-wide pressure against traditional pricing models and the steep commissions levied on restaurants.
Reflecting on the state of the industry, Sagar Daryani, president of the New Delhi-headquartered National Restaurant Association of India—an organization representing over 500,000 restaurants nationwide—offered a blunt assessment of the current landscape.
"Monopoly is bad, but duopoly is more pathetic," Daryani said, noting that whatever one dominant platform initiates, the other typically follows suit. He argued that restaurants have long craved viable alternatives to break their heavy reliance on the two dominant players.
Daryani points to a fundamental structural difference between Flipkart’s approach and the strategies employed by previous foreign entrants. While Zomato and Swiggy initially built their core business around food delivery before subsequently expanding into quick commerce, Flipkart is executing the exact reverse maneuver. The company is leveraging its deeply entrenched e-commerce infrastructure and its rapidly expanding quick-commerce operations as a foundational springboard into food delivery.
"Flipkart’s quick commerce benefit will get passed on to food delivery, so it will be leaner, more efficient," Daryani noted.
This efficiency drive is music to the ears of restaurant operators, who are hopeful that fresh competition will structurally lower the cost of selling meals online. Daryani, who also serves as the co-founder and CEO of dumpling chain Wow! Momo Foods, revealed that Flipkart has pitched a proposed base commission of roughly 10%. This stands in stark contrast to the 20% to 25% commission rates that restaurants are typically forced to pay Zomato and Swiggy.
Furthermore, base commissions represent only a fraction of the total vendor expense. Once advertising outlays, mandatory discounts, and various promotional costs are factored into the equation, restaurants frequently find themselves spending between 40% and 50% of an order’s total value on the established platforms. Daryani projects that Flipkart’s leaner model could help keep that cumulative cost closer to 15% to 16%, allowing restaurants to retain a significantly higher share of revenue from every order processed.
However, securing restaurant partnerships is only part of the equation; winning over price-sensitive and habituated consumers presents an entirely different challenge. Bernstein estimates that new market entrants might only be able to save customers a meager 20 to 30 Indian rupees—roughly 20 to 30 cents—per order through operational efficiencies. Industry analysts suggest this marginal saving may not be enough to aggressively pull loyal users away from Zomato and Swiggy, particularly given that the incumbents possess the financial muscle to deploy deeper promotional discounts in defense of their market share.
Despite these hurdles, Flipkart’s timeline for expansion is aggressive. The company has communicated to restaurant partners that it intends to launch its food-delivery service publicly by the end of October, with plans to rapidly scale operations to five or six major cities before the close of the year.
This strategic push into food delivery also unfolds against the backdrop of uncertainty surrounding Flipkart’s long-anticipated stock-market debut. Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy recently declined to provide a definitive timetable for an initial public offering, even as the firm aggressively expands into high-frequency transactional categories designed to bring customers back to its application on a more routine basis.
Flipkart’s latest maneuver arrives as competition across India’s broader digital commerce ecosystem reaches a fever pitch. Quick-commerce platforms that initially built their reputations on delivering household groceries in minutes now handle discretionary purchases, including the latest iPhones, putting them on a direct collision course with traditional e-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon.
Looking back at historical precedents, Flipkart’s entry revives memories of past failures by tech behemoths. In 2020, Amazon launched a localized food-ordering service in Bengaluru, only to quietly pull the plug on the venture two years later. Similarly, Google’s Areo app, which bundled food delivery alongside home services, failed to achieve meaningful market traction. Uber similarly exited the market in 2020 by selling its Indian Uber Eats business to Zomato for $206 million.
As Flipkart prepares to take its internal trials to the public sphere, the broader restaurant industry is watching closely to see if the retail giant can succeed where other well-funded international competitors faltered. Flipkart did not respond to requests for comment regarding its upcoming public launch timeline or operational strategy.
