Flipkart, the Indian e‑commerce giant owned by Walmart, is gearing up to take on the country’s dominant food‑delivery players Zomato and Swiggy. The Bengaluru‑based firm is testing a delivery service internally, expanding the trial from a few hundred staff members to more than 8,000, according to two sources familiar with the project. It has also set up a dedicated fleet of riders through its logistics subsidiary Ekart, separate from the riders who handle its quick‑commerce orders, as it prepares for a public rollout.
The employee‑only service appears as an additional tab on Flipkart’s main shopping app, alongside its Minutes quick‑commerce offering and travel bookings, TechCrunch learned. The platform sources restaurants listed on the government‑backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and those signed up directly with Flipkart. Riders wearing jerseys marked “Eat‑in by Minutes” have already begun delivering orders on the streets of Bengaluru, the city where Flipkart is headquartered.
If the service launches publicly, it will enter a market that Bernstein estimates is expanding at 18 to 20 percent annually. Online delivery still represents just over 15 percent of India’s broader food‑services sector. Zomato, owned by Eternal, and Swiggy together serve an estimated 85 to 95 million paying customers each year, according to Bernstein, underscoring their dominance but also highlighting the growth potential for new entrants in the world’s most populous nation, which now has more than a billion internet subscriptions.
Flipkart is not the only firm looking to shake up India’s food‑delivery space. Ride‑hailing platform Rapido, which has given Uber and its Indian rival Ola a stiff competition, is expanding its Ownly service, which charges restaurants zero commission. Swiggy, for its part, has launched Toing, a separate app aimed at price‑conscious diners. Both moves reflect mounting pressure on the industry’s pricing model and the commissions that restaurants must pay.
“Monopoly is bad, but duopoly is more pathetic,” said Sagar Daryani, president of the New Delhi‑based National Restaurant Association of India, which represents more than 500,000 restaurants nationwide. “What one does, the other follows suit.” Daryani argued that restaurants have long needed alternatives to the two dominant platforms.
Flipkart is not the first well‑funded company to try its hand at food delivery in India. Amazon launched a service in Bengaluru in 2020 but shut it down two years later. Google’s Areo app, which bundled food ordering with other services, also failed to gain traction. Uber exited the market in 2020, selling its Uber Eats business to Zomato. Daryani sees a key difference this time: Zomato and Swiggy built their businesses around meal delivery before moving into quick commerce, whereas Flipkart is doing the reverse, leveraging its established e‑commerce and fast‑commerce operations as a springboard into food delivery.
“Flipkart’s quick‑commerce advantage will be passed on to food delivery, making it leaner and more efficient,” Daryani told TechCrunch. Restaurants hope new entrants will lower the cost of selling meals online. Daryani, who also co‑founded and runs the dumpling chain Wow! Momo Foods, said Flipkart has suggested a base commission of about 10 percent, compared with the 20 to 25 percent typically charged by Zomato and Swiggy. When advertising, discounts and other promotional expenses are added, restaurants can end up spending 40 to 50 percent of an order’s value on the established platforms. Daryani expects Flipkart to keep the total cost closer to 15 to 16 percent, allowing eateries to retain more of each sale.
Winning restaurant partners is one challenge; attracting customers is another. Bernstein estimates that new entrants could save diners only ₹20 to ₹30 (roughly 20 to 30 cents) per order through greater efficiency, a margin that may not be enough to lure users away from Zomato and Swiggy, which could respond with deeper discounts.
Flipkart has told restaurants it plans to launch the service publicly by the end of October and to expand to five or six cities by year‑end, Daryani said. The push comes as the company’s long‑awaited stock‑market listing remains uncertain. Chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy recently declined to set a timetable for an IPO, even as Flipkart continues to add businesses that could bring customers back to its app more frequently.
The expansion arrives amid intensifying competition in India’s e‑commerce sector. Quick‑commerce platforms that began by delivering groceries in minutes now sell high‑end smartphones and other discretionary items, putting them in direct competition with both Flipkart and Amazon. Flipkart did not respond to a request for comment.