Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce titan owned by retail giant Walmart, is quietly preparing to challenge India’s deeply entrenched food-delivery duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy. By stepping into this fiercely competitive market, the Bengaluru-based company is attempting a high-stakes expansion that has previously defeated high-profile global and domestic competitors, including major past pushes by Amazon and Google.
According to people familiar with the matter, the Bengaluru-based enterprise is currently testing its food-delivery service internally. The pilot project has grown significantly, scaling outward from an initial group of a few hundred employees to more than 8,000 corporate testers. To support the trial ahead of a public rollout, Flipkart has deployed a dedicated fleet of delivery riders through its in-house logistics arm, Ekart. These personnel operate independently from the couriers who handle the platform’s standard quick-commerce deliveries, establishing a distinct operational pipeline for food service.
For internal testers, the food-delivery feature appears as a dedicated, standalone tab directly on Flipkart’s primary shopping application. It sits alongside its "Minutes" quick-commerce offering and existing travel-booking services. The platform’s initial restaurant inventory is being sourced through a dual approach: incorporating dining establishments listed via the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC)—a government-backed digital framework that seamlessly connects online buyers and sellers across diverse applications—alongside restaurants that Flipkart has signed up independently through direct partnerships.
On the streets of Bengaluru, where Flipkart maintains its corporate headquarters, early operational signs are already visible. Delivery personnel wearing distinct jerseys branded with "Eat-in by Minutes" have begun fulfilling test orders, navigating local traffic as the company fine-tunes its logistics, kitchen-to-doorstep timing, and app functionality ahead of a broader commercial launch.
The Timing and Scale of India’s Food Delivery Landscape
Flipkart’s aggressive foray into food delivery comes as the market experiences steady, robust expansion. According to estimates from brokerage firm Bernstein, India’s online food-delivery sector is currently growing at an annual rate of 18% to 20%. Despite this impressive trajectory, online delivery still accounts for a relatively modest slice of the country’s broader food-services industry, representing just over 15% of total market value.
At present, Zomato—owned by Eternal—and Swiggy completely command the space, collectively serving an estimated 85 million to 95 million paying customers annually, per Bernstein’s data. This staggering dominance highlights both the immense barriers to entry erected by the incumbents and the substantial room for growth remaining in the world’s most populous nation, which boasts more than a billion active internet subscriptions.
Flipkart is far from the only major corporate player looking to shake up the status quo. Ride-hailing platform Rapido, which has previously mounted stiff competition against Uber and domestic rival Ola, has also begun testing its own food-delivery service dubbed "Ownly," which features a zero-commission model for restaurants. Simultaneously, Swiggy has rolled out a separate application named "Toing" in the Delhi-NCR region, designed specifically to cater to consumers searching for lower-priced meal options. Both moves highlight mounting pressure across the industry against traditional pricing structures and the steep commissions historically levied on restaurant partners.
"Monopoly is bad, but duopoly is more pathetic," said Sagar Daryani, president of the New Delhi-headquartered National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), an organization representing more than 500,000 restaurants nationwide. "What one does, the other follows suit."
Daryani noted that restaurant operators have spent years searching for viable, competitive alternatives to the two dominant platforms to regain control over their profit margins and operational terms.
A Historical Graveyard of Tech Giants
Breaking into India’s food-delivery market is a formidable challenge, and Flipkart enters the arena knowing that several deeply capitalized predecessors have tried and failed. In May 2020, Amazon launched its own food-ordering service in Bengaluru, but the experiment failed to secure meaningful market share and was ultimately shut down two years later in late 2022. Similarly, technology titan Google launched its Areo app to offer food ordering and home services in India, but the product struggled to gain traction and was discontinued. Global ride-hailing giant Uber also retreated from the sector in March 2020, opting to sell its entire Uber Eats business in India to Zomato for $206 million.
Despite this graveyard of failed attempts by multinational tech giants, industry leaders like Daryani see a fundamental structural difference in Flipkart’s approach compared to those who came before it. While Zomato and Swiggy initially built their entire corporate identities and logistics frameworks around delivering hot meals before later branching into quick commerce, Flipkart is executing the exact reverse strategy. The company is leveraging its established, massive e-commerce infrastructure and its rapidly expanding quick-commerce operations as a sturdy springboard into the food-delivery vertical.
"Flipkart’s quick commerce benefit will get passed on to food delivery, so it will be leaner, more efficient," Daryani explained.
Rethinking the Economics of Restaurant Commissions
For restaurant owners burdened by the high cost of doing business online, the arrival of a new, well-funded competitor offers potential relief from soaring overhead expenses. Daryani, who is also the co-founder and CEO of the prominent dumpling chain Wow! Momo Foods, pointed out that Flipkart has proposed a remarkably competitive base commission structure of roughly 10%. This figure stands in sharp contrast to the 20% to 25% commission rates typically demanded by Zomato and Swiggy.
However, commissions represent only a fraction of the financial burden restaurants face when utilizing online platforms. Once mandatory advertising expenditures, platform discounts, and other promotional costs are factored into the equation, dining establishments frequently find themselves spending between 40% and 50% of an individual order’s total value on the established platforms. Daryani projects that Flipkart’s streamlined model could keep the total operational cost closer to 15% or 16%, allowing restaurants to retain a significantly higher share of revenue from every meal sold.
Yet, industry analysts emphasize that securing enthusiastic participation from restaurant partners is only half the battle; winning over price-sensitive everyday consumers is an entirely different hurdle. Bernstein estimates that new market entrants might only be able to save consumers roughly 20 to 30 Indian rupees—equivalent to about 20 to 30 cents—per order by operating with greater supply chain efficiency. Such marginal savings may not prove sufficient on their own to lure loyal users away from Zomato and Swiggy, particularly if the incumbents respond by deploying aggressive promotional discounts and loyalty incentives.
A Rapid Expansion Timeline and Broader Strategic Goals
Despite these competitive challenges, Flipkart has no intention of keeping its new service confined to a single city for long. Company representatives have informed restaurant partners that Flipkart aims to launch the food-delivery service publicly by the end of October, with plans to expand operations to five or six major Indian cities before the close of the year, according to Daryani.
This strategic push into food delivery arrives at a time when Flipkart’s long-anticipated initial public offering (IPO) remains without a firm timeline. Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy recently declined to provide a definitive schedule for taking the company public, even as the corporate group continues to aggressively expand into multi-category retail services designed to drive daily consumer engagement and increase app retention.
Flipkart’s wider operational expansion coincides with a period of intensifying competition across India’s broader digital commerce ecosystem. Quick-commerce platforms that initially focused strictly on delivering groceries within minutes have rapidly evolved to stock everything from everyday household goods to the latest Apple iPhones and other high-value discretionary purchases, putting them into direct commercial conflict with traditional e-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon.
Flipkart did not respond to requests for comment regarding its ongoing food-delivery trials and upcoming public launch plans.
