Flipkart is launching a food delivery app in Bengaluru with a 10% commission, aiming to disrupt the market dominated by Swiggy and Zomato, which are facing a restaurant boycott over high fees. The new platform will leverage the ONDC network, offering a competitive alternative to consumers and restaurants.

Flipkart is launching a food delivery app in Bengaluru with a 10% commission, aiming to disrupt the market dominated by Swiggy and Zomato, which are facing a restaurant boycott over high fees. The new platform will leverage the ONDC network, offering a competitive alternative to consumers and restaurants.

Flipkart is launching a food delivery app in Bengaluru with a 10% commission, aiming to disrupt the market dominated by Swiggy and Zomato, which are facing a restaurant boycott over high fees. The new platform will leverage the ONDC network, offering a competitive alternative to consumers and restaurants.

As Bengaluru restaurants threaten to stop accepting orders from the food delivery platforms Swiggy and Zomato, the Walmart-owned Flipkart is likely to launch its food delivery app in the same city.

The boycott, set to start on August 15, is over high commission rates. Coincidentally, the e-commerce giant Flipkart is pitching a lower commission rate of 10 per cent, compared to the typical 24 per cent to 25 per cent, offered by Swiggy and Zomato.

The app is speculated to pilot on the same day as the threatened boycott. Flipkart’s food delivery services will be available on a stand-alone app and its main app. Flipkart is expected to have the upper hand in the market as it uses the Government’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).

The ONDC initiative allows buyer apps and seller apps to list themselves on a common network. It aims to prevent single-app monopolies and level the playing field for restaurants. This gives buyer apps like Flipkart access to the inventories of the seller apps that have joined. This means that Flipkart can bypass the expensive, time-consuming process of creating a new marketplace from scratch.

Lower customer acquisition costs and an existing logistics network are why the company is offering lower commissions.

Flipkart is the latest entrant challenging the Swiggy-Zomato duopoly, right after Rapido’s Ownly disrupted the food delivery market. Ownly offers a flat fee instead of commission, and has scaled to over 40,000 orders across 25,000 restaurants in Bengaluru. It has taken over an estimated 7 to 10 per cent of the market share in just a few months.

Flipkart is also expected to be a direct competitor for Swiggy’s Toing. Toing is designed for price-conscious consumers, with a flat-fee structure instead of commissions.

Low commission rates and deep capital backing are expected to provide the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant with an opportunity to break the duopoly in the market, given its launch timing. 

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