Food Delivery Trends

Yesterday, Swish (10 minute food delivery app) announced its $2M Seed round led by Accel India. Swish is live at 2 locations in BLR so far -- and has plans to launch 150-200 kitchens in the next 8 months.. The "fast" food delivery battleground is heating up -- Zepto disclosed that it has crossed ₹160 crore annualized GMV from its Cafe biz. And, Zepto is opening 100 new cafes per month. Their target is to cross ₹1,000 crore annualized GMV by end of FY24-25 i.e. 6x growth this year. There are quite a few players in this segment: (1) Bolt by Swiggy (15 mins) -- marketplace model (i.e. 3rd party restaurants) (2) Swiggy Café (10 mins) -- 1P model (i.e. own dark kitchen) (3) Zepto Café (10 mins) -- 1P model (i.e. own dark kitchen) (4) Swish (10 mins) (5) Select restaurants on Zomato (10 mins) (6) Select non-Bolt restaurants on Swiggy e.g. Protein Chef by Lo Foods (15 mins) 💡 Note: Despite skepticism, I do believe there is a major gap for healthy foods to be delivered super fast (best example is Protein Chef) to capture wallet share of late night cravings, evening office hunger pangs etc.. Swish has taken the B2B2C route -- targeting densely packed office neighborhoods in BLR. Whereas, the incumbents are riding their massive B2C distribution from the legacy QC or F&B biz. 🧠 All players seem to have finally realized that some healthy options are required: Swish has a fruit bowl concept. Swiggy Café has protein shakes in partnership with The Whole Truth Foods (big fan, very biased, sorry!) I do believe that if this category is cracked, it could be a net +ve for health: Right now, snacking options near offices are primarily deep fried dishes (pakodas, samosas etc) or maggi variants.. Given enough time, you'll see the 10-15 minute food delivery players work out more healthy options. ➡️The key to building this biz will be figuring out the right balance of quality (ingredients & prep) <> speed of delivery <> assortment (i.e. menu refresh / variety). #startups #india #venturecapital

For a decade, food delivery in India was a settled business. Now Swiggy and Eternal are publicly betting on opposite futures. Swiggy is betting the future is a cheaper marketplace, i.e., Toing. Eternal is betting the future is a rebuilt kitchen, i.e., Bistro. Toing (and by extension Ownly) are expanding the market. 2 out of 3 Toing users are new to the Swiggy platform. The one-third who overlap with Swiggy exhibit one of two behaviours. Some just want an alternative and find Toing more appealing (staying within the company), while others split their use cases between Toing and the main Swiggy app. But Swiggy management pushed back hard on Ownly’s “zero commission” positioning, calling it a marketing label that doesn’t hold up to “the reality of the business.” Swiggy’s position is that a platform can lower or restructure fees, but it can’t make the underlying cost of delivery vanish. Basically, someone has to pay the cost of the platform for the model to be durable. The take rate shrinks but does not disappear. On the other hand, Deepinder Goyal says Bistro is his answer to the question Ownly and Toing are “pretending to solve”. He argues that you cannot make food delivery work at ₹50-150 price points without supply chain innovation and rethinking kitchen operations from first principles with custom equipment, workflows, and automation purpose-built for high-volume, limited-menu formats. In his view, speed and affordability are both downstream of the same rebuilt kitchen. On the shutdown of its own micro-kitchen experiment Snacc, Swiggy told analysts yesterday that the model needs a different kind of expertise, costs more to build, and carries highly uncertain economics. Rebel Foods built a 15-minute app called QuickiES and shut it too. Neither of which seems to worry Eternal or Swish. That is the fork. Every challenger here is still tiny next to the incumbents. So far, their market share is not under threat. But the biggest names are clearly preparing for a future that looks nothing like the last decade.

India’s quick food delivery space is on fire By 2030, this market is expected to cross ₹2 lakh crore Growing at a steady 18% CAGR We now have five players defining five radically different paths: 1. Zepto Cafe - Went from 30k to 100k+ daily orders - 50% gross margin on snacks & drinks - Built for 10-minute delivery via dark stores • Snack-first = higher margins than meals • Urban density + micro-warehousing is its engine • Positioned as a full-stack alternative to Zomato/Swiggy But: - Operations were paused in 44 stores across North India - Delhi NCR, Agra, Meerut, Haridwar, Gorakhpur, Amritsar, and Ghaziabad were impacted - Supply + staffing crunch triggered shutdown • Target to resume Q2 FY26 •Highlights the fragility of scaling ops too fast •High dependency on hyper-local labor & logistics 2. Bistro by Zomato  Zomato tried a restaurant-led 10-minute model.  It failed. • Kitchens weren’t ready • Restaurant menus were too long • CX was inconsistent - So they pulled the plug—and went all in on Blinkit’s Bistro kitchens. - Now active across Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru. - More than 100 kitchens. Zomato now controls the experience end-to-end. • Tighter kitchen prep timelines • Curated, limited menus  • Blinkit infrastructure as a moat 3. Swiggy Bolt Swiggy’s counterpunch? Bolt - Live in 500 cities - 10–15 min food delivery - Now over 10% of total Swiggy food orders Unlike Zomato’s earlier model, Swiggy took a smarter route: • Partnered with restaurants to create Bolt-only prep stations • Menus capped at 8–10 items for speed • Uses cloud kitchen expertise to streamline ops Bolt isn’t about being everywhere. It’s about owning the urban “hungry-now” moment - Ideal for metros - Great for high AOV use cases - Appeals to speed-first professionals 4. Swiggy Snacc Snacc is Swiggy’s most interesting—and riskiest—play - A standalone app - Built for snack-first consumers - Targets urban, health-conscious professionals Think cold brews. Protein bars. Shakes. Delivered in <10 minutes. Unlike Bolt or Bistro, Snacc is not about meals. It’s about intent-driven indulgence. Why a separate app? • To test a focused vertical • To learn from behavioural signals • To keep branding distinct from Swiggy’s mainline But:  - Low order frequency.  - Harder to builda habit.  - Limited scale outside major cities. 5. bigbasket enters the chat BigBasket just announced a national rollout of 10-minute food delivery. Starting with: - 40 dark stores by July - Snacks from Starbucks and Qmin (Tata-owned) - No third-party brands involved The twist? They’re bundling food with existing grocery orders. This means: • Lower delivery cost per order • Higher AOV per cart • Repeat use from a loyal base And they’re expanding dark stores from 700 → 1200 by end-2025. So what’s really going on here? Standalone apps. Snack-only menus. Bundled logistics. This isn’t just food delivery anymore. It’s micro-commerce. Optimized for time, mood, and moment.

I have always been fascinated by how dining habits evolve with social and economic shifts. In India, the geography of dining is changing before our eyes. Urban dine-in remains important, but the real momentum is building in suburbs, tier-2 towns, and through delivery platforms. The food services market in India is expected to grow from about Rs 5.5 lakh crore today to close to Rs 10 lakh crore by 2030. Online delivery is projected to account for nearly a fifth of that pie. Cloud kitchens, which were once considered experimental, are becoming mainstream. They already represent over a billion dollars in value and are projected to triple by the end of the decade. This is not just about efficiency. It is about creating hospitality in new forms, wherever the diner chooses to be. For me, these numbers are not abstract. They are signals. They tell us how restaurants must rethink design, reach, and experience. Here is how I see it: 1/ Suburbs and tier-2 cities are emerging as powerful growth engines. 2/ Cloud kitchens can extend a brand’s presence without diluting its identity. 3/ Delivery and hybrid formats demand the same attention to quality and consistency as a flagship restaurant. The future of dining in India belongs to businesses that understand these shifts deeply and adapt with clarity. As someone who lives and breathes this industry every day, I see this as a moment of great possibility. #India #Hospitality #Future #Trends #Growth #Success

For years, we have heard breathless predictions that driverless vehicles will take over the roads and that AI and robotics will decimate transportation jobs. At first glance, PepsiCo’s use of 35 fully autonomous trucks in Arizona to deliver Doritos, Cheetos, and other Frito-Lay products seems to fit that narrative. But look more closely because the truth is more nuanced and messy. Although their primary job was behind the wheel, PepsiCo has long used many of its delivery drivers as both drivers and sales representatives. In that capacity, they meet store owners, pitch promotions, explain new products, and gather feedback from buyers. So even as PepsiCo automates away the over-the-road activity, it is looking to expand the time and energy dedicated to the valuable facetime that drivers have always had. To be clear, change is coming and people's Cheetos will be moved (I couldn't resist). The company expects to retrain and redeploy some drivers into work tied to managing the new equipment, coordinating store visits, and handling unloading. PepsiCo also says it expects to hire fewer drivers over time. Will there be more or fewer jobs created from this shift? I would bet there are actually more, because facetime is a higher-value task with relatively elastic demand. More of it is better, and we do not yet know the point of diminishing returns. This is the pattern we see. The machine takes over a narrow, repeatable part of the job. Humans shift toward the work that requires judgment, trust, persuasion, problem-solving, and face-to-face relationships. Historically, technology has created new jobs even as it has destroyed old ones. AI may replace some roles outright, but in many cases it is eating parts of jobs rather than whole occupations. People are being pushed to spend more of their day on the parts of work that matter most and are hardest for software or machines to replicate. https://lnkd.in/djrZXyqD

The Platform Fee Revolution: How Zomato & Swiggy’s Silent Tax is Redefining Food Delivery Economics The quiet shift no one missed paying for. Between 2023-25, India’s food delivery landscape witnessed its most critical business model change in a decade, not in delivery speeds, or discounts, but in platform fees. 1. Swiggy: From Rs 2 in April 2023 to Rs 14 by August 2025, a 600% surge. 2. Zomato: From Rs 2 in August 2023 to Rs 10 by October 2024. What looks like a tiny tweak now generates Rs 1900+ crore annually across the duopoly. More importantly, it marks the end of subsidy-led growth and the arrival of consumer-funded sustainability in Indian food delivery. ✅ The Revenue Engine Behind the Shift - Zomato: With 2.5M daily orders, Rs 10 fee delivers Rs 900 crore annually, with just the last Rs 2 hike alone unlocking an additional Rs 180 crore a year. - Swiggy: At 2M daily orders, its Rs 14 fee brings in Rs 1008 crore annually, up from just Rs 144 crore in 2023. Together, platform fees have quietly become the third-largest revenue line item, after commissions and advertising. ✅ Why It Matters Beyond the Numbers 1. The Regressive Tax Effect: Platform fees hit smaller, lower-income orders harder: - A Rs 200 order + Rs 14 fee = 7% surcharge. - A Rs 800 order + Rs 14 fee = 1.75% surcharge. The poorer you are, the more you pay proportionally. 2. Restaurant Economics: Small outlets face falling order volumes and tighter margins. Large chains are building direct delivery ecosystems and subscriptions to bypass platforms. 3. Delivery Partners: Despite the new crores, delivery partners see no direct cut. Instead, they face volatile order volumes, more peak-time pressure, and stagnant payouts. 4. Market Dynamics: Swiggy & Zomato’s near-synchronous hikes point to soft coordination, if not collusion. Fees also raise entry barriers for new players, effectively cementing the duopoly. Let me share #Rajsperspectives 1. Zepto introduced a Rs 2 fee in 2024 (Rs 11 lakh/day extra revenue). Blinkit, Instamart, BigBasket are testing similar models. Quick commerce is set to mirror food delivery’s shift, making “platform fees” a sector-wide standard. 2. Platform fees won’t stay flat. They’re evolving into dynamic pricing models: Surge fees during rain, weekends, or peak dining hours. Location-based charges for “premium zones.” 3. AI-driven personalization where loyal or frequent users see lower/higher fees. Essentially, the “flat tax” is morphing into a flexible toll system, algorithmically managed. Platform fees started as a survival tool. They’re now a profit engine. But the line between sustainability and exploitation is razor thin. The next 3 years will decide: Do platform fees remain a necessary charge to keep the system running Or do they become a barrier to access, innovation & fair competition? Either way, this “silent tax” is no longer a side note, it’s the core of India’s food delivery economics. #food #india #finance #startup #taxes #economy

Evolution vs Reset — not every shift in egrocery is strategic Not every change we see in e-grocery today is strategic. Some are structural evolutions. Others are pragmatic resets. And understanding the difference matters — especially for those building platforms, funding infrastructure, or shaping go-to-market. This isn’t theory. It’s a cycle I’ve seen before. Back in 1998, we launched LeShop.ch — likely one of the world’s first online supermarkets. It was pre-broadband. Pre-smartphone. Pre-VC boom. We built it as a scheduled next-day delivery model — long before it became a category. Years later, we exited to Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund. Many assumptions of that time didn’t hold. Others aged well. What has changed most? Consumer expectations and infrastructure density. What’s strategic today? Shifts that align with how people live, eat, and decide — not just how companies operate: • The move from fixed mealtime to real-time consumption: Food is no longer tied to clock cycles. Platforms that serve need-states, not just SKUs, win in relevance. • The rise of ecosystem thinking: Scheduled + on-demand + in-store + dark store. It’s not about more channels. It’s about orchestrating access. • The shift towards fulfilment proximity and flexibility: Not just logistics — but redefined convenience. Consumers benchmark against what feels immediate. What’s a reset? Necessary, but reactive: • The retreat from mega automated fulfilment centres: A course correction. Capital discipline and density economics are now centre stage. • The funding sobriety across platforms: Sensible, but investor-led. A response to capital conditions, not a structural consumer shift. Why it matters: Only one set of shifts rewires the value model. Strategic evolutions don’t just reduce cost — they redefine the consumer relationship. And for those of us who’ve seen the early innings: It’s not just about what changed. It’s about what stayed hard. And how each generation builds with sharper tools — and clearer signals. #egrocery #onlinegrocery #quickcommerce #scheduleddelivery #retailstrategy #retailtransformation #foodtech #retailtech #logistics #supplychain #customerinsights #consumerbehaviour #d2c #omnichannel #digitalretail #freshfood #grocerydelivery #retailinvestment #platformstrategy #firstpartydata #ecosystemthinking #customerjourney #unitconomics #futureofretail #usa #europe #asia #globalretail #fmcg #businessmodel #valuecreation

When a market goes from three players to two… the rules change. Deliveroo’s exit from Singapore isn’t just a profitability signal. It’s a market structure shift. For years, Southeast Asia’s food delivery story was built on: → growth → incentives → competition But structurally, many markets were always heading here. Because food delivery doesn’t behave like traditional e-commerce. It depends on: - density - logistics efficiency - repeat behaviour - cost to serve And in markets like Singapore… that typically supports two scaled players — not three. That’s now the reality: → Grab → foodpanda Deliveroo’s exit reflects what happens when scale isn’t sufficient in a system that rewards: density over presence. And this is where things get more interesting. Because consolidation doesn’t just affect platforms. It reshapes the entire ecosystem. In more concentrated markets, over time you tend to see: → less aggressive discounting → more rational pricing → increased focus on margins → stronger platform control Which means: - merchants face tighter economics - consumers see fewer subsidies - platforms gain pricing leverage Not overnight. But gradually. At the same time, demand hasn’t disappeared. Southeast Asia’s food delivery market remains large and active. What’s changing is: how that demand is monetised. And that reflects a broader shift across the region: From: competition-led growth To: structure-led profitability For operators, this isn’t new. It’s the next phase. But it does raise a bigger question: As markets consolidate… who captures the value created by that demand? Because increasingly: It’s not just about who scales. It’s about who controls the system. Sources: Retail Asia, Channel News Asia, Momentum Works, TechNode, e27, DealStreetAsia, Bloomberg, DataReportal, Similarweb, Cube Asia, Gartner. #Ecommerce #SoutheastAsia #DigitalEconomy #FoodDelivery #PlatformEconomy DISCLAIMER Views are based on publicly available information and regional market observations. Intended for discussion purposes only and not financial, legal, or investment advice. https://lnkd.in/gSkRueGY

Your love for biryani once moved markets. It still does—just in a quieter way. Back in 2020, IPL nights turned into feast nights. Food orders shot up by 52%, fuelled by lockdowns, deep discounts, and the thrill of the game. Ordering biryani wasn’t just about food—it was an event. By 2023, that spike had cooled to just 7%, even with packed stadiums and record-breaking viewership. So, what changed? - Discounts vanished. No more 60% off. Now? You’re lucky to get ₹100 off—and you’re still ordering. - Habit formation: Big matches don’t drive orders anymore. Everyday cravings do. - Profit over volume. Zomato slashed marketing spends, pushed Gold memberships, and focused on repeat customers. But food delivery isn’t actually slowing down—it’s just moving beyond Tier 1 cities. For years, startups chased urban users, assuming real demand only existed in metros. But today, small-town India is leading growth: • 35% of Zomato’s 58 million customers now come from smaller cities. • Service has expanded from 500 cities in 2021 to 800+ today. Gig work is evolving. • Zomato’s 3.52 lakh+ delivery fleet is growing the fastest outside metros. • The Indian government is formalising gig jobs, shaping the future of flexible work. • Hyperpure, Zomato’s farm-to-fork arm, is reshaping supply chains by sourcing directly from farmers. So, what does this mean for you? For businesses, it’s a wake-up call: Tier 1 is no longer the only market that matters. Even at Coinswitch, we are seeing a similar pattern. Tier 2 & 3 are coming up in crypto investment. For years, companies built products assuming only metro users had spending power. But today? Small-town India is spending, ordering, and shaping the next wave of digital growth. And for you as a consumer? The next time you casually order dal-rice on a Tuesday afternoon, remember—you’re part of a ₹26,310 crore food industry shift that’s changing how India eats, works, and even farms. The next big market? It’s not just Delhi, Bangalore, or Mumbai anymore. It’s everywhere.