Flipkart, the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce giant, is preparing to challenge India’s food-delivery duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy. It is entering a fiercely competitive market that has defeated even previous attempts by Amazon and Google to break in. The Bengaluru-based company is testing its food-delivery service internally and has expanded the trial from a few hundred employees to upwards of 8,000, according to two people familiar with the matter.
It has also deployed a dedicated fleet of riders through its logistics arm, Ekart, separate from the riders who handle its quick-commerce deliveries, as it prepares for a public launch. The employee-only service appears as a separate tab on Flipkart’s main shopping app, alongside its Minutes quick-commerce offering and travel bookings, TechCrunch has learned. It draws on restaurants listed through ONDC, a government-backed network that connects online buyers and sellers across different platforms, as well as restaurants that Flipkart signed up directly.
Riders wearing jerseys bearing the “Eat-in by Minutes” branding have also begun fulfilling orders on the streets of Bengaluru, the southern Indian city where Flipkart is headquartered. As Flipkart expands its food-delivery operations, it is entering a market that the brokerage firm Bernstein estimates is growing 18% to 20% a year. Online delivery, though, still accounts for just over 15% of India’s broader food-services industry.
Zomato, owned by Eternal, and Swiggy together serve an estimated 85 million to 95 million paying customers a year, per Bernstein. That figure shows how dominant the two are, and how much room newcomers have to grow online food ordering in the world’s most populous country, which has more than a billion internet subscriptions. Flipkart is not the only company trying to shake up India’s food-delivery market.
Ride-hailing company Rapido, which has already given Uber and its Indian rival Ola a tough fight, has been expanding Ownly, its food-delivery service that charges restaurants zero commission. Meanwhile, Swiggy has launched Toing, a separate app aimed at customers looking for cheaper meals. Both moves reflect growing pressure on the industry’s existing pricing model and the commissions that restaurants pay.
Flipkart is not the first deep-pocketed company to try breaking into India’s food-delivery market. In 2020, Amazon launched a food-ordering service in Bengaluru, but it shut the service down two years later. Google’s Areo app, which offered food ordering alongside other services, also failed to gain traction.
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