India’s food-delivery market is beginning to look more crowded. After years of Swiggy and Zomato dominating restaurant aggregation, Rapido’s Ownly, Swish Go and Flipkart are testing whether lower costs, existing users and fresh delivery models can open a crack in the duopoly.
Ownly currently has the strongest early traction among the challengers. The Rapido-backed service is processing more than 50,000 orders a day in Bengaluru and recently entered Hyderabad, where it has already onboarded around 10,000 restaurants. Its pitch to restaurants includes zero commissions, while Rapido can lean on its existing mobility users and delivery fleet.
Swish is approaching the market differently. After building its identity around ultra-fast food from its own kitchens, it is now testing Swish Go, a broader restaurant marketplace in Bengaluru. The service is attracting partners through favourable commission structures and by waiving packaging and platform fees. Flipkart, meanwhile, is testing its Eat In service and brings something neither newcomer can replicate easily: an enormous existing ecommerce user base.
The opportunity exists partly because restaurants have long pushed back against commissions and other platform costs. But cheaper terms alone may not be enough. The more difficult challenge is building consumer habit — convincing users who already open Swiggy or Zomato automatically to download, try and repeatedly order elsewhere.
That is where the incumbents’ scale becomes formidable. Zomato averaged roughly 3.28 lakh monthly active restaurant partners in Q1 FY27, while Swiggy reported more than 2.7 lakh partners across over 720 cities. Both also continue to generate substantial growth from food delivery while building additional moats through quick commerce.
For Ownly, Swish Go and Flipkart, the first battle may be winning restaurants with better economics. The harder one comes next: turning curiosity into repeat orders before aggressive introductory terms become too expensive to sustain.
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Startup Unplugged
