Flipkart, the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce titan, is gearing up to challenge the country’s entrenched food-delivery duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy. In doing so, the Bengaluru-based company is stepping into a fiercely competitive arena that has previously rebuffed major global technology players, including prior attempts by Amazon and Google.
The e-commerce giant is currently testing its food-delivery service internally, having significantly expanded the trial from a few hundred corporate employees to upwards of 8,000 testers, according to two people familiar with the matter. As it prepares for an impending public launch, the company has deployed a dedicated fleet of riders through its logistics subsidiary, Ekart. These delivery personnel operate separately from the riders who handle the company’s quick-commerce operations.
The employee-only service currently appears as a distinct tab on Flipkart’s primary shopping application, sitting alongside its "Minutes" quick-commerce offering and its travel booking services. To source restaurants, Flipkart is leveraging venues listed through ONDC—a government-backed open network designed to connect online buyers and sellers across disparate platforms—alongside direct partnerships with restaurants that the company has signed up independently.
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, offering a visible sign of the company’s offline ambitions.
As Flipkart expands these food-delivery operations, it is entering a rapidly expanding market. According to estimates from brokerage firm Bernstein, India’s food-delivery sector is growing at an annual rate of 18% to 20%. Despite this robust growth, online delivery still accounts for just over 15% of the country’s broader food-services industry. Zomato, which is owned by Eternal, and Swiggy together serve an estimated 85 million to 95 million paying customers annually, according to Bernstein. This massive footprint underscores both the deep dominance of the two incumbents and the vast runway available for newcomers aiming to capture online food orders in the world’s most populous nation, which boasts more than a billion internet subscriptions.
Flipkart is far from the only player attempting to disrupt India’s food-delivery landscape. Ride-hailing firm Rapido, which has previously mounted a formidable challenge against Uber and its domestic rival Ola, has been actively testing "Ownly," its own food-delivery service that charges restaurants a zero-commission rate. Concurrently, Swiggy has rolled out "Toing," a separate application targeted specifically at budget-conscious consumers looking for cheaper meal options. Both strategic maneuvers reflect mounting pressure on the industry’s traditional pricing models and the steep commissions that restaurants are forced to pay.
"Monopoly is bad, but duopoly is more pathetic," said Sagar Daryani, president of the New Delhi-headquartered National Restaurant Association of India, an organization representing over 500,000 restaurants nationwide. "What one does, the other follows suit."
Daryani argued that restaurants have long sought viable alternatives to the two dominant platforms, pointing to the structural need for marketplace competition.
Flipkart, however, is not the first deep-pocketed multinational to try breaking into India’s lucrative food-delivery ecosystem. In 2020, Amazon launched its own food-ordering service in Bengaluru, only to shut the initiative down two years later. Google’s Areo app, which attempted to bundle food ordering alongside various home services, similarly failed to gain meaningful traction in the market. Meanwhile, ride-hailing giant Uber exited the space entirely in 2020 by selling its Uber Eats business in India to Zomato for $206 million.
Daryani points to one fundamental difference between Flipkart and the corporate giants that tried and failed at food delivery before it. While Zomato and Swiggy built their foundational businesses around food delivery before subsequently expanding into quick commerce, Flipkart is executing the reverse strategy. The company is leveraging its massive, established e-commerce infrastructure and its rapidly growing quick-commerce operations as a 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.
Local restaurants are also hoping that the entrance of well-funded new players will help 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, revealed that Flipkart has proposed a base commission of approximately 10%. This compares sharply with the 20% to 25% commission rates that restaurants are typically required to pay Zomato and Swiggy.
Yet, standard commissions tell only part of the financial story. Once advertising expenditures, targeted discounts, and other promotional costs are factored into the equation, restaurants frequently find themselves spending between 40% and 50% of an entire order’s value just to operate on the established platforms. Daryani stated he expects Flipkart to keep that total cost profile much closer to 15% or 16%, a shift that could allow restaurants to retain a significantly higher share of revenue from every order processed.
Nonetheless, getting restaurants to sign up on paper is vastly different from successfully winning over everyday consumers. Bernstein estimates that new market entrants may only save customers roughly 20 to 30 Indian rupees—equivalent to about 20 to 30 cents—per order by operating with greater logistical efficiency. Industry analysts note that this minor savings margin might not prove sufficient to pull loyal customers away from the entrenched ecosystems of Zomato and Swiggy, particularly if the incumbents respond by deploying deeper consumer discounts and promotional offers.
Flipkart has no intention of keeping its new service restricted to its home turf for long. The company has reportedly informed prospective restaurant partners that it plans to launch its food-delivery service publicly by the end of October, with intentions to scale operations across five or six major Indian cities before the conclusion of the year.
This aggressive food-delivery push also arrives at a time when Flipkart’s long-anticipated stock-market listing remains shrouded in uncertainty. Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy recently declined to provide a definitive timetable for an initial public offering, even as the firm presses forward with aggressive expansions into adjacent business verticals designed to drive customers back to its application with higher frequency.
Flipkart’s broader maneuvers unfold against a backdrop of intensifying competition across India’s entire e-commerce and retail sector. Quick-commerce platforms that initially built their reputations on delivering household groceries in a matter of minutes have evolved to sell high-value discretionary items, including the latest Apple iPhones and consumer electronics. This evolution places quick-commerce players into increasingly direct competition with traditional online retail heavyweights like Flipkart and Amazon.
Flipkart did not respond to requests for comment regarding its upcoming food-delivery launch.
