Walmart’s Flipkart is quietly building a food delivery challenger in India

Key points

• Flipkart is testing food delivery internally with up to 8,000 employees and a dedicated Ekart rider fleet.
• It plans a public launch by end of October and expansion to five or six cities by year-end.
• Flipkart has proposed about a 10% base commission, below the 20% to 25% charged by Zomato and Swiggy.

Walmart-owned Flipkart is preparing to enter India's food-delivery market, challenging the Zomato and Swiggy duopoly. The Bengaluru-based e-commerce company is testing the 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.

Flipkart has deployed a dedicated rider fleet through its logistics arm, Ekart, separate from its quick-commerce riders. The employee-only service appears as a separate tab on Flipkart's main shopping app, drawing on restaurants listed through the government-backed ONDC network and restaurants Flipkart signed up directly. Riders in Bengaluru have begun wearing jerseys with the "Eat-in by Minutes" branding.

Market and commission plans

Brokerage firm Bernstein estimates the market is growing 18% to 20% a year, with online delivery accounting 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.

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. He expects Flipkart's total cost to restaurants to be closer to 15% to 16%.

Monopoly is bad, but duopoly is more pathetic

— Sagar Daryani

Launch timeline and rivals

Flipkart has told restaurants it expects to launch publicly by the end of October and expand to five or six cities by the end of this year, Daryani said. The push comes as Flipkart's long-awaited stock-market listing remains uncertain; CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy recently declined to give an IPO timetable.

Amazon, Google and Uber have previously tried and failed to break into the market. Ride-hailing company Rapido is expanding its zero-commission Ownly service, and Swiggy has launched Toing, an app aimed at customers seeking cheaper meals. Flipkart did not respond to a request for comments.