Flipkart tests food delivery as India’s duopoly faces a new rival

Flipkart is testing a food-delivery service in Bengaluru, expanding an employee-only trial to more than 8,000 people as it prepares to challenge India’s established Zomato-Swiggy duopoly. The Walmart-owned e-commerce company has also deployed a dedicated fleet through its Ekart logistics arm, according to reporting by TechCrunch. ¹

What Flipkart is building

The service appears as a separate tab inside Flipkart’s main app, alongside its Minutes quick-commerce offering and travel bookings. The trial uses restaurants listed on ONDC, India’s government-backed open-commerce network, as well as restaurants recruited directly by Flipkart. Riders wearing “Eat-in by Minutes” jerseys have reportedly begun delivering orders around Bengaluru. ¹

Flipkart has not announced a public launch itself. TechCrunch reports that the company has told restaurants it expects to launch publicly by the end of October, then expand into five or six Indian cities before the end of the year. That timetable comes from people familiar with the plans and restaurant-industry sources, rather than a formal Flipkart product announcement, so it should be treated as reported guidance rather than a confirmed launch date. ¹

Why the market matters

India’s online food-delivery market is dominated by Zomato, owned by Eternal, and Swiggy. TechCrunch cites Bernstein estimates putting their combined annual paying customers at between 85 million and 95 million, while online delivery accounts for just over 15% of India’s wider food-services industry. The numbers explain both the opportunity and the difficulty: plenty of customers are already ordering digitally, but the two incumbents have a huge head start. ¹

Flipkart’s argument is that it can approach the market from the opposite direction. Zomato and Swiggy built meal delivery before moving into adjacent services, while Flipkart already operates a large e-commerce platform, a quick-commerce business and Ekart’s delivery network. That could give it operational advantages, although it does not automatically solve the harder problem of persuading customers to switch apps or try another delivery service.

Restaurants may have a clearer reason to pay attention. Sagar Daryani, president of the National Restaurant Association of India, told TechCrunch that Flipkart has proposed a base commission of about 10%, compared with the 20% to 25% restaurants typically pay Zomato and Swiggy. Once advertising, discounts and other promotional costs are included, Daryani said a restaurant’s total expense can reach 40% to 50% of an order’s value on the established platforms. Flipkart’s reported target is closer to 15% to 16%. ¹

Those figures are claims about a proposed model, not proof that every restaurant will receive the same terms. They also leave open the question of whether lower commissions can survive once Flipkart starts paying for customer acquisition, discounts and delivery capacity at scale.

The competition is already moving

Flipkart is entering a market where other challengers are also experimenting. Ride-hailing company Rapido has been expanding Ownly, a food-delivery service that charges restaurants no commission, while Swiggy has launched Toing as a lower-cost food app in Delhi-NCR. Amazon previously launched food ordering in Bengaluru but closed the service in 2022, and Google’s Areo app failed to establish a lasting foothold. ¹

That history is the warning sign for Flipkart. Building a delivery tab is relatively straightforward; creating enough order density for riders, restaurants and customers to keep using it is much harder. Flipkart’s existing shopping and quick-commerce traffic may give it a better starting point than a standalone entrant, but the company still has to prove that food can become a repeat habit rather than another rarely opened feature.

Our opinion

Flipkart’s trial is worth watching because it tests whether an established commerce platform can use its logistics and app reach to prise open a market that has resisted several well-funded challengers. The reported commission structure could make the service attractive to restaurants, while a separate in-app tab lowers the barrier for existing Flipkart users. But the service is not public yet, the launch timetable is sourced reporting rather than an official announcement, and the savings for customers may be modest. For now, this is a credible experiment with a plausible distribution advantage — not evidence that India’s food-delivery duopoly is about to disappear.

The hero image is illustrative: a delivery rider with an insulated bag, photographed by Kampus Production and supplied through Pexels. ²