Flipkart to Launch Food Delivery Service in India in Coming Weeks

Walmart-owned Flipkart is preparing to enter India's online food delivery market in the coming weeks, adding another major player to a category currently dominated by Eternal-owned Zomato and Swiggy. Confirming the development, Flipkart Group Chief Executive Officer Kalyan Krishnamurthy said the company will initially launch the service on a limited scale before expanding further.

"We will launch food delivery in the next few weeks," Krishnamurthy said in an interview with Moneycontrol. "Like everything else we do, we will launch food delivery first, test the value proposition with customers, take feedback and continue improving the product until it really appeals to the customer. After that, we'll start scaling it."

The food delivery service is expected to follow a phased rollout similar to Flipkart Minutes, the company's quick commerce business. Krishnamurthy indicated that the offering would be available through a dedicated application as well as integration within the main Flipkart platform.

"It will be a combination of a separate app plus also you will see it on the Flipkart app," Krishnamurthy said, while declining to disclose the brand name or launch city.

Industry sources indicate that Flipkart's food delivery offering will be integrated with the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), although the company has not officially commented on the operational structure. Flipkart's entry comes at a time when multiple companies are experimenting with alternative food delivery models. Rapido recently introduced its Ownly platform, positioning it around lower costs and zero restaurant commissions, while Swiggy launched Toing to target value-conscious consumers.

At the same time, Eternal has downplayed the impact of emerging platforms, arguing that early customer traction is being driven largely by discounts rather than differentiated business models. Eternal founder Deepinder Goyal has previously stated that future innovation in the sector is likely to come from supply-side initiatives such as Bistro, the company's in-house quick food delivery business. Krishnamurthy did not provide details on Flipkart's competitive strategy but emphasised that the company would focus on creating a differentiated customer experience.

"When we launch a product, we launch it because we believe we actually can innovate and bring something new to the table. Customer value goes beyond pricing and includes factors such as assortment, service quality, reliability and the overall experience. We will do our best to innovate across all of these vectors of value proposition. We will scale it pan India once we believe we actually have something across these. If it's part of the Flipkart app, people will go in with the expectation that most of the catalogue available in the market should be on the app. We will, over time, make an effort to cover the entire catalogue," said Kalyan.

Flipkart's entry could create additional distribution opportunities for restaurants while increasing competition among delivery platforms.