Walmart-backed Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart is gearing up for a high-stakes entry into India’s fiercely contested food-delivery sector, preparing to challenge the long-standing duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy. The Bengaluru-based company is stepping into a notoriously challenging arena that has previously defeated high-profile attempts by global tech titans Amazon and Google, both of which eventually retreated from the market.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the Bengaluru-headquartered firm is currently testing its food-delivery service internally. The pilot program has scaled significantly, expanding from a modest initial trial involving just a few hundred employees to upward of 8,000 internal users. In preparation for a broader public rollout, Flipkart has also deployed a dedicated fleet of delivery riders through its in-house logistics subsidiary, Ekart. These riders operate separately from the personnel handling the company’s quick-commerce operations, establishing a dedicated operational backbone for the upcoming service.
Within Flipkart’s primary shopping application, the employee-only food-delivery feature currently appears as a distinct tab. It sits alongside its "Minutes" quick-commerce offering and travel booking services, providing seamless integration for users already browsing the platform. To populate its digital storefront, the service sources restaurant options through the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC)—a government-backed network designed to seamlessly connect online buyers and sellers across disparate platforms—alongside a growing roster of eateries that Flipkart has signed up through direct partnerships.
On the streets of Bengaluru, where Flipkart maintains its corporate headquarters, early signs of the public push are already visible. Delivery personnel wearing distinct jerseys bearing "Eat-in by Minutes" branding have been spotted actively fulfilling test orders across the southern Indian technology hub, signaling that the internal testing phase is rapidly maturing into a real-world stress test.
As Flipkart lays the groundwork for its expansion, it is targeting a sector that is experiencing robust upward momentum. Market data from brokerage firm Bernstein estimates that India’s online food-delivery market is expanding at an annualized rate of 18% to 20%. Despite this rapid growth, online delivery still accounts for a relatively modest slice of the broader food-services industry, representing just over 15% of the total market. Meanwhile, Bernstein notes that Zomato—owned by Eternal—and Swiggy collectively serve an estimated 85 million to 95 million paying customers annually. This massive footprint underscores both the entrenched dominance of the two incumbents and the vast runway available for new entrants seeking to capture consumer demand in the world’s most populous country, which boasts more than a billion internet subscriptions.
Flipkart is not alone in identifying an opening to disrupt the status quo. Rapido, the ride-hailing challenger that has given established players like Uber and homegrown rival Ola a run for their money, has also been quietly scaling "Ownly," its proprietary food-delivery service that promotes a zero-commission model for restaurants. At the same time, Swiggy has launched "Toing," a separate application specifically engineered to cater to price-sensitive consumers searching for more affordable meal options. These concurrent moves highlight mounting industry-wide pressure against the conventional pricing architectures and steep commissions that restaurants have long been forced to absorb.
Industry representatives have voiced strong support for new market entrants, arguing that relief is urgently needed. Sagar Daryani, president of the New Delhi-headquartered National Restaurant Association of India—an organization representing more than 500,000 restaurants nationwide—did not mince words regarding the current landscape. "Monopoly is bad, but duopoly is more pathetic," Daryani remarked, adding that whatever strategic move one incumbent initiates, the other invariably follows suit. According to Daryani, restaurant owners have spent years looking for viable commercial alternatives to the two dominant platforms.
While Flipkart is stepping into uncharted territory for its own brand, it follows a well-trodden path of deep-pocketed firms that have tried and failed to crack the code. In May 2020, Amazon rolled out a food-ordering service in Bengaluru, only to pull the plug on the venture roughly two years later. Similarly, Google’s Areo app, which attempted to bundle food delivery alongside other home services, struggled to gain meaningful consumer traction and faded away. Uber similarly exited the direct delivery arena in March 2020 by offloading its Indian Uber Eats business to Zomato in exchange for $206 million.
However, industry veterans point out a fundamental operational distinction between Flipkart’s current strategy and the playbook used by its ill-fated predecessors. While Zomato and Swiggy initially built their core business models around food delivery before subsequently branching out into quick commerce, Flipkart is executing the exact reverse strategy. The company is leveraging its mature e-commerce ecosystem and expanding quick-commerce infrastructure as a springboard to enter the food-delivery market.
Daryani emphasized that this reverse approach could yield significant structural advantages. "Flipkart’s quick commerce benefit will get passed on to food delivery, so it will be leaner, more efficient," he noted.
For restaurant operators, the primary allure of a new competitor lies in the potential reduction of transaction costs. Daryani, who also serves as the co-founder and CEO of popular dumpling chain Wow! Momo Foods, revealed that Flipkart has proposed a baseline commission structure of approximately 10%. In contrast, restaurants typically pay between 20% and 25% in commissions to Zomato and Swiggy.
When factoring in supplementary expenses such as mandatory advertising, steep discounts, and promotional campaigns, the total cost of doing business on established platforms can consume 40% to 50% of an order’s total value. By comparison, Daryani anticipates that Flipkart’s leaner model could keep overall platform-related costs closer to 15% or 16%, allowing restaurants to retain a significantly healthier share of revenue from every meal sold.
Yet, securing restaurant partnerships is only part of the equation; convincing end consumers to switch allegiances presents an entirely different challenge. Bernstein analysts note that new market entrants might only be able to save consumers roughly 20 to 30 Indian rupees per order through operational efficiencies—a marginal saving that may not automatically prove sufficient to lure loyal users away from Zomato and Swiggy. Furthermore, the incumbent platforms possess the financial muscle to deploy aggressive defensive discounting to retain their user bases.
Flipkart appears poised to move quickly beyond its initial testing grounds. According to Daryani, the company has communicated plans to transition its food-delivery service into a public launch in Bengaluru by the end of October, with intentions to rapidly scale the offering to five or six additional cities before the close of the year.
This strategic push into food delivery unfolds against the backdrop of an uncertain timeline for Flipkart’s long-anticipated initial public offering. Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy recently declined to provide a definitive timetable for an IPO, even as the firm aggressively expands into high-frequency service categories designed to draw consumers back to its ecosystem on a daily basis.
The timing also coincides with a broader intensification of competition across India’s digital retail landscape. Quick-commerce platforms that initially focused on delivering groceries within minutes have aggressively expanded their product catalogs to include high-end discretionary goods, ranging from everyday consumer electronics to the latest iPhone models. This aggressive diversification places quick-commerce players on a direct collision course with traditional e-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon.
Flipkart did not respond to requests for comment regarding its upcoming food-delivery rollout.
