Flipkart has forayed into food delivery with Eat, piloting the service in Bengaluru among its employees, according to people familiar with the matter, as the company looks to take on established players such as Zomato, Swiggy and Rapido-backed Ownly.
The service is expected to be rolled out to all Flipkart employees by 15 September, following which the company plans to expand Eat to consumers in Bengaluru, the people said. The employee rollout will allow Flipkart to test the service, refine its operating model and assess restaurant and delivery operations before a wider launch.
Flipkart is building Eat in partnership with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and is working on a lower commission structure for restaurants, the people added. This could put the company in direct competition with Ownly, which has positioned itself as a zero-commission food delivery platform.
The entry comes at a time when the food delivery market is witnessing renewed competition, with existing and new players experimenting with pricing, commission structures and other models to attract price-conscious consumers.
Separately, Flipkart has rolled out Minutes, its quick-commerce service, as a standalone application ahead of the festival shopping season and its Big Billion Days sale. The moves come as Flipkart seeks to increase the frequency with which consumers use its platforms, even as traditional ecommerce platforms face growing competition from quick commerce for routine purchases.
Data shared by Satish Meena, Founder, Datum Intelligence, show the shift in consumer engagement. Flipkart and Myntra together accounted for 35 per cent of monthly active users (MAUs) among key ecommerce platforms in CY25 and CY26 year-to-date, down from 39 per cent in CY23 and CY24 and 38 per cent in CY22.
At the same time, quick-commerce applications — including Blinkit, Zepto, BigBasket, Swiggy Instamart and JioMart — accounted for 16 per cent of MAUs in CY26 year-to-date, according to Meena. The data suggests that quick commerce is increasingly competing for consumer attention and routine purchases that traditionally went to ecommerce platforms.
Meena said the shift is particularly pronounced in metros, with around 80 per cent of quick-commerce gross merchandise value (GMV) coming from eight cities. He said the grocery and top-up trips made by households several times a week are increasingly moving towards quick commerce.
The emergence of these high-frequency use cases is prompting ecommerce companies to look beyond their traditional shopping propositions. For Flipkart, food delivery and quick commerce could therefore serve as additional touchpoints to bring consumers back to its ecosystem more frequently, even as competition for ecommerce users intensifies.
Published on September 9, 2026
