Purpose Foods and Quick Commerce Reshaped India's Food Sector in 2025 India's fast-growing D2C food market saw functional eating go mainstream, q-commerce become the default discovery engine, and clean-label brands battle both demand and discipline

India's D2C food market didn't just grow in 2025; it transformed. Healthy snacking moved from niche to daily habit, functional foods became default pantry staples, quick-commerce turned into the primary engine for trial and repeat buying, and consumers across metros and Tier-2 cities began reading labels more seriously than ever before.

For the first time, instant delivery and ingredient transparency shaped brand strategy more than pricing or packaging. For founders, this created both opportunity and pressure: rapid discovery and habit formation on one side, and rising CAC, operational complexity, and food-safety scrutiny on the other.

Q-Commerce as Growth Engine

Quick commerce was the defining channel of 2025, especially for homegrown food brands. For Farmley, a D2C food brand, it became the strongest growth driver. Co-founder Abhishek Agarwal explained that consumers increasingly treat healthy snacking as a "right now" moment, making q-commerce the most natural fit for their better-for-you products.

"At the same time, our offline expansion accelerated. We crossed 20,000+ retail stores, and our Modern Trade presence is scaling steadily across metros and Tier 1 cities," said Agarwal.

Brands like ZOFF Foods also share the same sentiment. "Online and marketplaces remained important for discovery and storytelling," says Co-founder Akash Agrawalla, adding, "while quick-commerce became the default 'I-need-it-now' channel for everything from spice mixes to last-minute gravies."

However, the economics of instant delivery introduced real challenges. Brands faced the dual burden of rising logistics costs and volatile Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Investors responded accordingly. While capital continued to flow into the D2C food space, founders reported sharper diligence, higher expectations for margin visibility, and pressure to rationalise SKUs.

Rise of 'Purpose Foods'

If 2024 popularised functional foods, 2025 institutionalised them. Across categories, consumers sought products offering clear benefits, whether in protein, gut health, immunity, emotional comfort, natural sweetness or low-sugar profiles.
Swiggy's How India Eats 2025 report reveals that health-oriented orders grew 2.3 times, compared to 1.0x growth in overall orders. Search behaviour followed the same trajectory, with "protein," "low calorie," "vegan," and "no added sugar" emerging as India's most searched health tags.

For founders, this translated into specific product decisions. ZOFF Foods saw the strongest demand clustering around immunity and everyday cooking. Products like turmeric-based latte premix grew because consumers began seeking functional evening rituals rooted in Indian comfort. Their five-minute gravies and cold-ground spices solved another functional need: nutritious home-cooked meals made in real-world time.

"This shaped our pipeline in two ways: we doubled down on time-saving formats without compromising on purity, and we started thinking of "functional" as a combination of health, comfort, and practicality, not just a claim on the front of the pack," said the co-founder.

Qoot Food's clean-label brand Quipps was built entirely around this behavioural shift. Director Ravi Somani notes that consumers have become deeply ingredient-aware, often rejecting products containing palm oil, artificial preservatives or processed sugar. He adds that the clean-label category is also undergoing necessary shakeouts as brands that fail to meet manufacturing standards begin to lose trust.

"Consumers are clearly shifting toward cleaner and healthier choices. With issues like poor air and water quality and concerns around pollution, people want food that has fewer preservatives and harmful ingredients. I believe this trend will continue strongly over the next few years," Somani added.

Omnichannel is the New Default

One of the most decisive learnings of 2025 was that no single channel can win. Brands that performed best blended discovery-driven D2C channels, instant-need q-commerce, and habit-building offline retail.

ZOFF's co-founder explained that while online channels brought education and visibility, Q-commerce brought immediacy, and modern trade delivered depth. This mirrors wider consumption behaviour.

Farmley's omnichannel traction underscores this point as instant snacking decisions were being made on q-commerce, but deeper trust and routine consumption came from their growing offline presence.

"The clean-label and functional foods segment has become significantly more competitive across online, offline and quick-commerce formats. With more brands entering the space, differentiation through authenticity and ingredient transparency has become critical," said Abhishek.

Food Safety & Regulations

Even as the sector grew, operational challenges intensified. Late-2025 inspections in certain quick-commerce warehouses found expired or mislabelled items, a warning signal for brands and platforms alike. This placed food safety and traceability under unprecedented scrutiny.

ZOFF Foods anticipated this shift and doubled down on sourcing and processing transparency. "Functional benefits must come from the ingredient itself, not just the marketing," says Agrawalla.

Qoot Food, which manufactures for both startups and major retailers, similarly highlighted that only companies with strong control over production processes will survive as the clean-label segment matures.

Regulators are expected to tighten norms in 2026, particularly around batch tracking and warehouse auditing, making operational rigor a foundational requirement rather than a differentiator.

Looking Ahead

Founders expect that 2026 will be about consolidation and discipline. Brands across the sector expect mergers, acquisitions and exits as investors push for unit economics. Functional eating will deepen rather than decline, evolving from a trend into an expectation. Clean-label formats will move from premium to mass consumption as more shoppers seek foods that combine taste, transparency and nutritional value.

Next year, brands anticipate a wave of trends shaped by younger audiences. "Looking ahead to 2026, we believe that the next wave of growth will be driven by young consumers. They will look for clean-label food options and products that provide some form of additional nutrition such as protein, calcium or iron," said Qoot Food's Director Ravi Somani.

India's consumers expect speed, authenticity, nutrition, and ingredient clarity, often in the same basket. The next stage of growth belongs to brands that combine clean ingredient lists, operational quality and omnichannel presence.