Quick commerce keeps India's food delivery space hot Delivering fresh food in 10 minutes remains operationally complex but quick commerce firms and platforms are going for it.

India's food delivery segment continues to thrive as new and incumbent companies consistently experiment with fresh ideas, including marrying it with the popular quick commerce model.

India's food delivery market size was valued at USD 45.15 billion in 2024, and is poised to be worth USD 320.31 billion by 2033, according to an IMARC Group report.

The market is driven by a duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy as they hold nearly equal market share, according to industry estimates. Both are now publicly listed companies. Zomato went public in July 2021, while Swiggy launched its IPO in November 2024.

Cloud kitchen companies such as Rebel Foods and platforms on the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) hold a tiny share of the market.

Quick commerce-isation

In parallel, India's quick commerce has emerged as a powerhouse. The so-called 10-minute delivery industry has now scaled into an over USD 10 billion GMV market with more than 30 million users, according to a Redseer report.

What began as quick grocery delivery has itself diversified into a multi-category discovery platform, enabling both emerging and established players to scale. Quick commerce companies are also in rapid expansion mode to offer nearly everything on their platforms, ranging from appliances to beauty products.

Food is now likely the next frontier, but with caveats.

Zepto has been experimenting with Zepto Cafes for a while. Eternal has Bistro (via Blinkit), while Swiggy has SNACC and Bolt. Interestingly, Rapido is toying with something called Ownly, though speed is not the core proposition.

A relatively new entrant, Swish earlier this year raised nearly USD 14 million from Hara Global Capital and existing investor Accel India. This followed a USD 2 million seed round. Swish describes itself as a "rapid food delivery platform" and promises fresh food delivered to doorstep in 10 minutes.

How is the quick food delivery experiment working out?

As far as Zepto goes, the company has made quite a few adjustments in this foray.

It recently paused operations of nearly 200 Zepto Cafes due to the lack of demand for the offerings under the instant meal service, according to reports. Zepto is considering redirecting the riders for Cafe towards dark store operations.

Entrepreneur India has reached out to Zepto for a response.

Earlier this year, Zepto founder Aadit Palicha said that the Zepto Café had hit 100,000 orders per day.

"...That's closing in on a $100M Annualized GMV run-rate with a ~50% steady-state gross margin (already 10%+ of the scale of some of the top QSR chains in the country). It has not been easy to get this business off the ground - the execution is highly complex and there were multiple do-or-die challenges along the way (many of which are still work in progress). Still, our team stuck to its guns because the customer love and long-term compounding retention we were seeing was worth it," he said.

Swiggy is also gaining some traction with Bolt and Snacc. In its recent letter to investors, Swiggy disclosed that Bolt contributed more than 10% of its food delivery volumes, and has scaled to more than 500+ cities. The company also highlighted consumers' changing behavior wherein they're upgrading to this faster delivery option in many cases for their existing food needs.

"As the ease of the proposition opens up new use-cases, we have seen that consumers gradually increase their consumption over time similar to the Quick-commerce model, Bolt has slightly lower AOVs than the platform average due to the kind of incremental consumption it enables, like desserts, coffee, etc. However, the lower last-mile reduces delivery costs, making Bolt economics similar to the overall platform. As the only such service in the market, it also creates differential salience for our platform across both consumers and restaurant partners. While there will be natural limitations to the expansion of this service across dishes and restaurants given prep-time constraints, we continue to work with our restaurant partners to further improve the choice and reliability for our consumers," the company said.

On Snacc, Swiggy noted that the platform is solving for both affordability and speed, through a micro-kitchen model.

"Snacc is significantly incremental to existing Food delivery volumes by design, since the proposition is for much lower-AOV meals which could be in the nature of snacks and beverages, basic meals, or other low-involvement fasteats. By the nature of the offering, we are currently figuring out the economic model for this service.Ultimately, both these models are aiming to increase the frequency of consumption, especially by urban new-age users; and provide incremental orders (and better customer retention) to the platform," it added.

10 Minute Lunch Break

As of now, most food delivery quick commerce involves precooked or prepacked or instant cooked products. Cooking fresh food and packing, and delivering it in 10 minutes remains operationally complex.

Serial entrepreneur and Kiko Live founder Alok Chawla explains that in the food space, it's not just about the speed but also the taste and brand.

"In standard grocery, it's the same Amul butter, so it doesn't matter if it's coming from the local grocery store or from Zepto. But a Zepto burger is not the same as say a McDonalds burger. We think this is a fad that may not be sustainable," Chawla said.

Deepak Gupta, General Partner at WEH Ventures expressed similar sentiments, and also highlighted that delivering prepared food is more complex than basic grocery delivery.

"It needs skilled staff, consistent products across the country, hygiene, etc- so while it can build frequency and recall, bad/inconsistent experience can also crater the brand. And there are not many backend providers of baked goods, which are at a national scale, so the sourcing is complex," Gupta added.

As of now, rapid food delivery remains a niche use case and a bit complicated. Factors like lower AOVs, operational bottlenecks and changing unit economics raise concerns over scalability and long-term sustainability.

However, new and incumbent platforms are likely betting on increasing appetite for quick commerce as well as consumers' evolving behaviour wherein they prefer convenience.