Flipkart pilots 'Eat-In' food delivery service in Bengaluru: Details inside

India’s food delivery sector is gearing up for fresh disruption as Flipkart pilots its new service, Eat In, among employees in Bengaluru ahead of a broader rollout planned for mid-September. According to a Moneycontrol report citing unnamed sources, Flipkart is likely to extend Eat In to its entire staff base in the city around September 15, before making it available to customers across Bengaluru. The e-commerce major ultimately aims to expand the food delivery offering to other cities as part of its growth plans.

Eat In represents Flipkart’s push to take on dominant players Zomato and Swiggy in the fiercely competitive urban food delivery market. The service is being developed in collaboration with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), a government-backed network aiming to standardize and democratize online commerce in India. Notably, Flipkart is exploring a lower-commission model to make its platform more attractive to partner restaurants, compared with existing industry norms.

Initially, Eat In will be featured as part of Flipkart’s primary shopping app, with the possibility of launching a standalone application later depending on customer adoption and business growth, according to sources quoted in the report.

Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy has signaled the company’s intent to offer customers an experience that balances competitive pricing with broader selection, service quality, and reliability. “If it’s part of the Flipkart app... people will go in with the expectation that most of the catalogue available in the market should be on the app. We will, over time, make an effort to cover the entire catalogue,” Krishnamurthy told Moneycontrol in an earlier interview.

Krishnamurthy also stated that the company plans to launch food delivery first in a limited trial, gather feedback, and refine the proposition before scaling up. “We will launch food delivery in the next few weeks. Like everything else we do, we will launch food delivery first, test the value proposition with customers, take feedback and continue improving the product until it really appeals to the customer. After that, we'll start scaling it,” he noted.

Flipkart’s entry coincides with heightened competition in the value segment of the food delivery market. Rapido, which recently launched its zero-commission Ownly service, is already processing more than 50,000 orders daily in Bengaluru, or about 10 percent of the city’s estimated 500,000 to 600,000 daily food-delivery orders.

Meanwhile, Swiggy is targeting cost-conscious users through its low-priced Toing app, which brokerage CLSA estimates has nearly 33 million weekly active users - close to Zomato’s 35 million. Zomato’s parent firm Eternal is sticking with a different strategy, keeping budget offerings on the main Zomato app and investing in Bistro, a food delivery venture focused on affordable meals built on a distinct operating model.

As Flipkart readies for a broader public debut of Eat In, the move signals growing momentum in India’s food delivery space to capture cost-sensitive customers while battling for market share and loyalty through new business models and expanded dining options.