Food delivery in India and how it became the new normal

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India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal recently criticised the country’s start-up sector for its lack of real technological innovation, singling out food delivery app operators saying they exploited cheap labour in the service of wealthier Indians unwilling to make an effort to get their meals. Yet, these elements, low operating costs and booming consumer demand for convenience, have been key in attracting global investment into India’s food delivery companies. In 2025 app-based food delivery in India, dominated by Zomato and Swiggy, has an estimated value of $US 45 billion, with a forecast of $US 265 billion by 2033. These phenomenal valuations ensure food delivery is often in the media, but this article traces how Indians were enticed to adopt food delivery as a lifestyle choice in the first place.

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I first noticed scooter drivers carrying large black boxes emblazoned with the mysterious word ‘Swiggy’ in Delhi in 2014. Learning it was a new food delivery service, I did not take much notice. Ten years earlier, I had discovered it was possible to have ready-made food delivered to your door from local eateries in India’s metros, including hot chocolate fudge sundaes from Nirula’s. I found this marvellous as the only thing delivered in Australia then was pizza. Claims that online food delivery was ‘innovative’ were boosterism to me. Certainly, it allowed consumers to order online rather than over the telephone, and from further afield, but it was just replicating an existing service otherwise. In 2018, when I began interviewing chefs and restaurateurs across India about the country’s changing foodways, many were enthusiastic about the potential of online food delivery to enable revenue growth using existing restaurant infrastructure. This caused me to take a more considered look at how food delivery was being interposed into Indian food life.

A societal behaviour change initiative

Leafing through a 2018 copy of The Times Food Guide (Hyderabad edition) I found Swiggy extensively advertised, along with an advertorial proclaiming they were “solving the many gaps in the food delivery industry [and] revolutionis[ing] the industry for restaurants”. Likewise, Zomato was promoting its platform as the solution for Indians suffering a “cook versus … order [in]” problem. Planting the idea there was problem, regardless of whether one actually existed, for which online food delivery was the remedy, was the first step in arousing consumer interest in trying it. The next step was for the delivery companies to train them to use their service whenever they wanted something to eat by offering irresistible discounts. People ardently availed of these bargains, all the while unwittingly habituating themselves to using food delivery services: exactly the outcome the delivery companies intended.

It was the monies poured into India’s food delivery companies by global investors that enabled them to run national advertising campaigns, sophisticate their software, and offer free delivery to bond customers to their service. However, it was restaurants that bore the costs of the discounts offered, in addition to large commissions paid to platform operators on orders. This often ended up with them paying for customers to eat their food. Restaurateurs had agreed to the discounts believing this would attract new customers who would then return. This proved a false anticipation. The reductions only encouraged people to chase deals on apps wherever these were offered. Rather than allies of the hospitality industry, food delivery companies become an enemy.

In August 2019, at the urging of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), 2000 restaurants logged out of the delivery apps. A NRAI spokesperson said food delivery companies had got consumers “addicted to discounts”. True in the moment, but it was a tactic employed by delivery companies to get people ‘addicted’ to using apps in the longer term. An uneasy truce was settled after the delivery companies made minor compromises. Then, COVID-19 arrived. The pandemic proved a gift for food delivery, firmly cementing the habit amongst Indians of opening an app to get their eats. In a country where many communities have long upheld strict demarcation around ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ food, with the latter deemed a threat to bodily and/or caste purity, it has been fascinating to observe how quickly people adopted to acceptance of food prepared in unknown kitchens, delivered by anonymous workers.

Food delivery also proved the saviour of many restaurants during the pandemic. But what is the cost to India of generating profits for food delivery companies?  In 2024 The Economist reported the country’s delivery platforms had broadened access to foods high in sugar and salt. A recently published book, OTP Please! Online Buyers, Sellers and Gig Workers in South Asia, features interviews with Indians decrying their dependence on food delivery apps – one respondent actually described himself as “addicted”- and the junk diet this led them to consume, simultaneously admitting to lacking motivation to make an effort to eat better.

WATCH: Comedian Jose Covaco on Zomato Instant, a 10-minute delivery initiative 

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