After scrapping the 10-minute food delivery service in 2023, Zomato has re-entered the instant food delivery market in 2025. The homegrown food-tech giant has reportedly launched a 15-minute food delivery service in select cities. This comes as its biggest rival in the country, Swiggy, launched its quick food delivery service – ‘Bolt’ – in October 2024. For now, Zomato’s new quick food delivery service is reportedly live in parts of Delhi-NCR.
The Gurugram-based company is planning to rapidly scale up this new service across the city. However, neither the company nor CEO Deepinder Goyal has confirmed this development yet. Under this new service offering, the Zomato app displays restaurants within a limited radius of 1.5–2 km for orders.
With this fresh development, Zomato may seem to be competing with its own quick commerce arm, Blinkit – which was acquired in 2022. Notably, last month, Blinkit launched a new standalone app – Bistro. This is also a quick commerce food delivery service. Using this app, users can order snacks and beverages and receive delivery in 15 minutes.
In the business sector, quick commerce has emerged as a new hot trend, much like AI in the tech sector. In India, the quick commerce industry is expected to reach $9.95 billion by 2029. It is also estimated to have around 60.6 million users by 2029, a significant increase from approximately 26.2 million in 2024.
Interestingly, in the quick commerce industry, primarily dominated by grocery deliveries, the instant food delivery culture is also rapidly gaining popularity. There are several significant players in this sector in India, including Zomato’s Bistro, Swiggy’s Bolt, Dash (Ola Consumer), and Magicpin’s MagicNOW. Among them, Zepto Cafe is also a prominent player, offering 10-minute food delivery since 2022. Last month, the company’s co-founder Aadit Palicha claimed that Zepto Cafe is adding 100 cafes a month and is currently clocking 30,000 orders a day.
Even though the 10-15 minute food delivery service has also attracted a lot of criticism over food quality and health concerns, it hasn’t stopped big giants from betting on it. According to a JM Financial report, India’s online food delivery market is expected to more than double, reaching $15 billion by March 2029.
In November 2024, Zomato completed its $1 billion Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP) fundraising. The significance of this fund increases further as a major chunk of the proceeds will be deployed to expand Blinkit’s network of dark stores and warehouses. Talking about Zomato’s financials, it recorded a 389% year-on-year surge in net profit for the second quarter of FY25, reaching ₹176 crore. Meanwhile, it also reported a 68% increase in revenue, reaching ₹4,799 crore for the same period. Additionally, the company has $1.3 billion in cash reserves.
