Bistro will offer customers high quality, canteen-type food in 10 mins: Albinder Dhindsa

Zomato-owned Blinkit officially made its debut in the quick food delivery space in December last year with the launch of its dedicated app, Bistro. Positioned to challenge established players like Zepto Café and Swiggy Bolt, Blinkit’s latest offering is currently in its pilot phase, operating in select areas of Gurugram. With Bistro, Blinkit aims to carve a niche in this rapidly growing segment by promising 10-minute deliveries of freshly prepared meals.

Talking about the launch, Blinkit CEO, Albinder Dhindsa on Friday said, "With Bistro, we will offer our customers high quality, canteen-type food, delivered hot in 10 minutes. We believe high quality food that is more accessible has the potential to induct more customers into “outside of home” food consumption. At Bistro, no preservatives or food processors are used in preparing the food, nor is it microwaved processed food. Instead, we are investing in infrastructure and R&D to create tasty dishes within 5 minutes or less," Blinkit CEO, Albinder Dhindsa. 

The Bistro app, now available on Google Play Store, boasts a variety of freshly prepared food and beverages, including samosas, burgers, fries, rice bowls, pastas, curries, and desserts such as cakes and brownies. It also offers beverages like tea, coffee, smoothies, and juices. According to the app’s description, Bistro ensures that food arrives either piping hot or refreshingly cold within 10 minutes, thanks to strategically located kitchens and streamlined delivery processes.

Blinkit’s move into the food delivery market is seen as part of its broader strategy to diversify its revenue streams. The brand previously piloted a large-order fleet and introduced EMI options for higher-value purchases. 

Zepto Café: The Early Mover Advantage

Zepto Café, which entered the quick food delivery market in 2022 in Mumbai, has been a key player in this space. The platform offers branded and non-branded pre-made food items, focusing on snacks and beverages. Highlighting Zepto Café’s rapid expansion, Aadit Palicha, co-founder of Zepto, recently tweeted about the launch of a dedicated app for Zepto Café: “The team is shipping an MVP and iterating quickly, so it may not be perfect on Day 1, but it’s worth it to launch fast.”

Palicha also revealed that Zepto Café is now opening over 100 new outlets every month and processing more than 30,000 daily orders. Speaking to PTI, Palicha outlined Zepto’s ambitious plans: “Our ambition is to go public next year, assuming stable capital markets and strong business performance.” The company has raised $350 million in a recent funding round to boost domestic ownership and is aiming for profitability by FY 2025-26.

Addressing critiques of the quick commerce model, Palicha said, “Claims that quick commerce disrupts kirana stores are data-free narratives. This sector has created 4.5 lakh jobs in three years, with wages exceeding ₹20,000—significantly higher than the informal sector.”

Swiggy Bolt: Expanding to Tier 2 and Tier 3 Markets

Swiggy, another heavyweight in the food delivery space, launched its Bolt service in 2023 to deliver snacks and beverages within 10 minutes. Initially piloted in six cities—Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune—Bolt is now expanding to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities like Roorkee, Guntur, Patna, and Shillong. The service focuses on delivering popular items from QSRs (quick-service restaurants).

“Cities from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have witnessed the highest adoption for Bolt, followed by Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Punjab,” Swiggy said in a statement on December 2. The company’s rapid expansion aims to capture emerging markets like Jaipur, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, and Kochi, where demand for quick food delivery is rising.

Apart from Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy, smaller startups like Bengaluru-based Swish and Delhi NCR’s Zing have also entered the fray. Swish recently launched a 10-minute food delivery service with $2 million in funding from Accel, while Zing debuted its operations in select markets. These players add diversity to the segment, catering to niche audiences and specific geographies.

Industry View:

Somil Agrawal, a growth, GTM, and marketing leader with 16+ years of experience scaling businesses in e-commerce, travel, and telecom, highlighted the potential risks of separating services into standalone apps. “I think Zepto should have kept the 10-min delivery ‘cafe’ inside the main app to leverage the 10-min delivery theme and continued to build on it. That would have enabled them to occupy and strengthen their positioning in consumers’ minds as a 10-min delivery service for everything from grocery to e-commerce and food. Hiving it off and having customers download another app may lead to giving customers another drop-off point vulnerable to influence by competitors,” Agrawal stated.

Experts also questioned Blinkit’s decision to introduce Bistro as a separate app despite being part of Zomato’s ecosystem. “The Blinkit hive-off is actually more surprising considering they are already part of the Zomato family, which is very much into the same food delivery business. If Zomato wanted to enter the 10-min food delivery model, doing it via the main food app would have been more logical than having it as a separate brand, that too under Blinkit branding. I would love to be a fly on the wall in Zomato’s boardroom to listen to the brainstorming behind this particular conversation.”

Dheer Lalit Gupta, an expert simplifying digital transformation for businesses at AdaptNXT, provided regulatory context for the segmentation strategies. “As per GOI regulations, marketplaces are not allowed to have a stake in any seller on their platform. That would explain why both Zepto and Blinkit are running this on separate apps—which would be registered as separate entities outside the marketplace business,” Gupta explained.