2025 was not the brightest year for food delivery giants in India. Amid macroeconomic pressures and soft consumer spending, food delivery platforms saw tepid revenue growth. The industry also faced a slowdown in the growth of transacting consumers. Growth plateaued due to sluggish customer acquisition and the absence of a meaningful increase in order frequency from existing users.
To compensate, both Zomato and Swiggy raised platform fees, which offered little respite, raising concerns around the sustainability of food delivery models.
The year also witnessed the sector face a regulatory headwind emerging from a new tax regime. Delivery services provided through ecommerce platforms are now taxed at 18%. Platforms like Swiggy and Zomato are now required to pay 18% GST on delivery charges when the supplier, typically the delivery partner, is not GST registered.
Amid this, Bengaluru-based Rapido entered the food delivery space with the launch of Ownly, partnering with restaurants affiliated with the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI). Rapido later expanded its ecosystem through a partnership with magicpin.
Meanwhile, newer players such as Swish emerged with 10-minute food delivery. Swiggy launched Snacc, while Zomato briefly experimented with ultra-fast food delivery before scaling back the offering and instead expanding its Bistro brand through quick commerce via Blinkit.
While 2025 may not have been a strong year in terms of headline growth, it stood out for experimentation and the entry of new players — the developments that could set the stage for a pivotal year ahead.
Looking ahead to 2026, food delivery platforms are expected to continue scaling revenues, but profitability is likely to remain under pressure due to rising delivery costs, limited pricing headroom with consumers, and the need to aggressively defend market share. What else is in store for India’s food delivery sector in 2026? Let’s explore…
While India’s restaurant industry is targeting tier II and tier III cities for the next phase of growth, the reality for food delivery is expected to remain metro-first even in 2026, according to industry experts.
In 2026, analysts expect order volumes to expand in the high single digits, driven by urban cohorts where food delivery has become a daily utility rather than an occasional indulgence. For high-frequency metro users, monthly orders are already inching up from five to six or seven.
This growth, however, will face several challenges. Salary stagnation, muted wage hikes, and rising job uncertainty, particularly amid a greater AI-led job churn, will continue to impact discretionary spending. As a result, consumers are becoming more selective about what and when they order, especially as platform fees and menu prices continue to rise amid broader macroeconomic pressures.
Outside metros, the picture is far less encouraging. Tier III and IV towns will continue to see negligible growth, marked by low order frequency, high price sensitivity, and a strong preference for offline pickup or direct restaurant ordering. In these markets, food delivery platforms are still viewed as expensive intermediaries rather than value enablers.
Also, with new players coming in and order frequency saturating, the focus for food delivery platforms in 2026 will be around defending urban market share rather than pursuing aggressive expansion.
In 2026, delivery integrity, not just delivery speed, will become the defining consumer expectation. Customers will increasingly push back against compromises in actual delivery experience — late arrivals, damaged packaging, and meals turning cold despite on-app promises.
A major flashpoint will be multi-order batching. While users pay full delivery fees, they often become the third or fourth stop on a combined route, without clear disclosure. “ETA extensions erode trust and leave customers feeling locked into orders with almost no recourse,” said Sachin Taparia, the founder of LocalCircles.
Moreover, packaging quality will also emerge as a battleground. Spilt gravies, crushed desserts, flimsy containers, and inconsistent packaging standards will directly undermine perceived value. A few premium restaurant partners may invest in sturdier containers, but the majority will struggle to balance cost pressures with presentation.
Ultimately, platforms will be forced to rebalance cost optimisation with experience quality. The consumer message — people are willing to pay delivery fees but only if reliability, transparency, and food integrity are guaranteed — is already clear and will be louder in 2026.
Health-conscious eating will move beyond branding and become a core part of food delivery strategy in 2026. Urban consumers, especially millennials and young professionals, are increasingly looking for meals that feel lighter, cleaner, and balanced. Salads, bowls, protein-rich menus, low-oil preparations, and calorie-counted offerings will gain traction.
Food delivery platforms have already started responding to these trends with curated ‘healthy collections’, nutrition tagging, allergen filters, macro-breakdowns, and even partnerships with fitness and wellness brands.
Yet, despite rising awareness, comfort foods such as pizza, biryani, fried snacks and desserts will still drive the highest order volumes.
“In 2026, health will evolve into a portfolio play, not a replacement. Platforms and restaurants will need to integrate healthier choices without cannibalising indulgent ones, using positioning, pricing, and discovery tools to create choice without compromise,” said Satish Meena, the founder of Datum Intelligence.
The shift, he added, won’t be about turning food delivery into a wellness service but making healthier eating frictionless, familiar and optional.
From a business perspective, 2026 will be about sustainability. The hot food quick-delivery experiments that promise 10–20 minute deliveries created noise in 2025, but 2026 may mark the end of these mass-scale ambitions.
“The model has proven commercially brittle — limited SKUs, narrow cuisine suitability, and high-density rider availability requirements make it fundamentally difficult to scale beyond pockets of metros. While it worked for select items such as tea, snacks, packaged bakery, full meal delivery under such time constraints remains unit-negative,” an executive at a food delivery giant said.
In 2026, platforms will move from speed to efficiency, not as a retreat but as a strategic recalibration. Rather than fight niche quick food delivery players like Swish in a race for minutes, Swiggy and Zomato are likely to push hybrid models — bundling hot-snack SKUs such as garlic bread, samosas, croissants, and desserts with grocery or convenience deliveries. These items travel well, carry higher margins, and don’t require precision ETAs.
The shift also reflects wider consumer trends. With wages stagnating and platform fees rising, consumers are no longer willing to pay extra for ultra-fast delivery unless the product is priced right.
ONDC entered the food delivery market with disruptive potential, but in practice, 2026 will likely see it fade away. The core issue is that food delivery is not a pure marketplace business but a logistics, service reliability and trust product.
“ONDC’s fragmented network approach: multiple apps, riders, and merchant systems, results in inconsistent ETAs, weak tracking, and limited customer recourse,” an executive, who quit ONDC earlier this year, said, requesting anonymity.
He added that ONDC underestimated a key reality — food delivery is unforgiving. A late pizza is not the same as a late kurta delivery. Without standardised packaging norms, temperature-controlled handling, or service guarantees, ONDC can’t deliver the reliability consumers expect.
Compounding this are incidents of restaurants using substandard ingredients or poor packaging for ONDC orders, due to lower commission incentives. This hurts platform trust and brand safety.
However, ONDC won’t become completely irrelevant. Its presence will keep pricing and commission transparency in public discourse, and regulators may view it as a benchmarking tool against perceived platform monopolies. In 2026, ONDC’s trajectory will be more of a policy instrument rather than a commercial disruptor.
While ONDC may not be a threat, food delivery platforms are set to face margin pressure from Rapido’s Ownly. 2025 was Rapido’s experimentation year — learning the economics of food delivery, testing workflows with partners, and building a logistics backbone suited to low-cost markets. In 2026, Ownly is expected to grow, not by overtaking Swiggy or Zomato, but by putting pressure on their margins, especially in price-sensitive customer segments.
“Rapido will double down on value-led positioning — lower delivery fees, cheaper commissions for restaurants, and aggressive discounting to capture price-sensitive users, especially in tier II pockets and select metro suburbs. For a segment of consumers fatigued by rising platform fees, Ownly presents a viable alternative,” Meena said, adding that Rapido can push incumbents into uncomfortable trade-offs — protect margins or defend market share.
As India’s food delivery sector heads into 2026, platforms will need to defend their urban market share, improve delivery reliability, and balance pricing carefully as consumers become more value-conscious.
Speed alone will no longer be enough — trust, transparency, and food quality will matter just as much. Health-led offerings will grow, and at the same time, new models like Rapido’s Ownly will intensify margin pressure. Together, these forces will pave the way for a year where execution will decide long-term winners.