Walmart-owned Flipkart is preparing to enter India’s food delivery market with a service called Eat-in by Minutes, expanding an internal trial in Bengaluru to more than 8,000 employees ahead of a planned public launch, according to reports.
The company has expanded the pilot from a few hundred employees to upward of 8,000, according to TechCrunch, which cited two people familiar with the matter. The service appears as a separate tab inside Flipkart’s main shopping app, alongside its Minutes quick-commerce offering and travel bookings, so users do not need to download a new app.
Flipkart has told restaurant partners that it expects to launch publicly by the end of October and to expand to five or six cities by the end of the year, National Restaurant Association of India president Sagar Daryani told TechCrunch. Flipkart has not officially announced a launch date or the cities.
The service draws on restaurants listed through the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), a government-backed network, as well as restaurants Flipkart has signed up directly. Flipkart has deployed a dedicated delivery fleet through its logistics arm, Ekart, separate from the riders who handle quick-commerce orders. Riders in Eat-in by Minutes jerseys have begun fulfilling orders in Bengaluru. Flipkart is also offering order discounts and extra SuperCoins rewards to encourage use during the trial.
Flipkart is positioning the service around lower restaurant commissions, reported at around 10 percent. Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said in July that the company would test food delivery on a limited basis first, and has said it wants to offer selection, reliability and service quality rather than just lower prices.
The entry adds a well-funded rival to a market led by Zomato and Swiggy. Newer players such as Rapido’s zero-commission service Ownly and Swiggy’s budget app Toing are already competing on price. The market has proved hard for large technology companies to crack, and earlier attempts by Amazon and Google did not succeed.
The Eat-in pilot began with employees in early September, and Flipkart launched Minutes as a standalone app around the same time, ahead of its Big Billion Days sale.