Flipkart, the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce titan, is gearing up to disrupt India’s entrenched food-delivery duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy. In doing so, the Bengaluru-based company is wading into a fiercely competitive and notoriously difficult market—one that has previously thwarted high-profile attempts by global giants like Amazon and Google.
According to people familiar with the matter, Flipkart is currently testing its food-delivery service internally. The trial has grown rapidly from a few hundred employees to upwards of 8,000 participants as the company prepares for a public launch. To ensure operational readiness, Flipkart has deployed a dedicated fleet of riders through its logistics arm, Ekart. These delivery personnel operate separately from the riders who handle the company’s quick-commerce operations, establishing a distinct supply chain for hot meals.
The employee-only service appears as a designated tab on Flipkart’s main shopping app, sitting alongside its "Minutes" quick-commerce offering and travel booking features. The platform sources restaurant options through a dual approach: it taps into establishments listed via the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC)—a government-backed network connecting online buyers and sellers across diverse platforms—while also onboarding restaurants directly through its own partnerships.
On the streets of Bengaluru, the southern Indian technology hub where Flipkart is headquartered, riders wearing jerseys featuring "Eat-in by Minutes" branding have already begun fulfilling test orders, signaling that a public rollout is drawing closer.
As Flipkart expands its operations, it enters a rapidly expanding sector. Brokerage firm Bernstein estimates that India’s food-delivery market 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. Meanwhile, Zomato—owned by Eternal—and Swiggy collectively serve an estimated 85 million to 95 million paying customers annually, according to Bernstein data. This commanding footprint highlights both the immense market dominance of the two incumbents and the substantial runway available for newcomers in the world’s most populous nation, which boasts more than a billion internet subscriptions.
Flipkart is not alone in its quest to challenge the status quo. Ride-hailing firm Rapido, which has steadily captured market share from Uber and its domestic rival Ola, has begun testing "Ownly," its own food-delivery service that promises zero commissions for restaurants. At the same time, Swiggy has rolled out "Toing," a separate app targeted specifically at budget-conscious consumers looking for affordable meals. Both developments highlight mounting pressure on the industry’s traditional pricing structures and the steep commissions 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 (NRAI), which represents over 500,000 restaurants nationwide. "What one does, the other follows suit." Daryani noted that restaurant operators have long sought viable alternatives to the two dominant platforms to regain control over their margins and business models.
Historically, breaking into India’s food-delivery sector has proved exceptionally challenging for heavily capitalized technology giants. In 2020, Amazon launched a food-ordering service in Bengaluru, only to shut it down two years later. Similarly, Google’s Areo app, which offered food ordering alongside home services, failed to gain meaningful traction in the market. Uber also retreated from the space in 2020, selling its Indian Uber Eats business to Zomato for $206 million.
However, industry observers suggest that Flipkart’s operational strategy differs fundamentally from those of its failed predecessors. While Zomato and Swiggy initially built their core businesses around restaurant food delivery before later diversifying into quick commerce, Flipkart is approaching the market in reverse. The company is leveraging its massive, established e-commerce infrastructure and its rapidly scaling quick-commerce operations as a direct springboard into food delivery.
"Flipkart’s quick commerce benefit will get passed on to food delivery, so it will be leaner, more efficient," Daryani told TechCrunch.
Restaurants are similarly optimistic that new market entrants will successfully drive down the high cost of selling meals online. Daryani, who is also the co-founder and CEO of the dumpling chain Wow! Momo Foods, revealed that Flipkart has proposed a base commission of roughly 10%. By comparison, restaurants typically pay Zomato and Swiggy commissions ranging from 20% to 25%.
When accounting for additional expenditures such as mandatory advertising, steep discounts, and promotional campaigns, restaurants often find themselves spending 40% to 50% of an order’s total value on the established platforms, according to Daryani. He anticipates that Flipkart’s lower structural costs could keep total merchant expenses closer to 15% or 16%, allowing restaurants to retain a significantly larger share of revenue from each transaction.
Yet, successfully onboarding restaurants is only part of the equation; winning over price-sensitive consumers represents an entirely different challenge. Bernstein estimates that new market entrants might only be able to save customers 20 to 30 Indian rupees (approximately 20 to 30 cents) per order through operational efficiencies. Industry analysts question whether such modest savings will be enough to lure loyal users away from Zomato and Swiggy, particularly given that the incumbents possess the financial muscle to deploy aggressive defensive discounting.
Despite these hurdles, Flipkart’s expansion timeline is moving swiftly. The company has informed restaurant partners that it plans to launch the food-delivery service publicly by the end of October, with intentions to expand the offering 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 public stock-market listing remains surrounded by uncertainty. Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy recently declined to provide a definitive timetable for an initial public offering (IPO), even as the firm continues to invest aggressively in adjacent service categories designed to drive higher user engagement and more frequent app visits.
Flipkart’s broader expansion also coincides with a period of intensifying competition across India’s digital commerce landscape. Quick-commerce platforms, which originally established themselves by delivering everyday groceries in a matter of minutes, have steadily expanded their inventories to include high-value discretionary goods, such as the latest Apple iPhones. This evolution has placed quick-commerce players into increasingly direct competition with traditional e-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon.
Flipkart did not respond to requests for comment regarding its upcoming food-delivery launch.
