Inside QuickiES: Rebel Foods’ 15-Min Gamble Against Zomato, Swiggy

“With due respect to aggregators [Zomato and Swiggy], who play a vital role, their strength lies in logistics irrespective of what they deliver, but Rebel Food’s key strength lies in food,” — Sagar Kocchar, CEO of EatSure by Rebel Foods.

Even as Kocchar defended Rebel Foods’ moat after the launch of QuickiES, the company’s own take on quick food delivery services, the reality is that now India’s OG cloud kitchen startup is now playing on the turf of Zomato and Swiggy.   

For instance, Rebel Foods promises a complete refund if the delivery isn’t made within 15 minutes – a claim never seen before — but largely built around figuring out the logistics behind each delivery. 

Of course, at this moment, the quick food delivery model is immature and therefore a lot more has to be figured out. Even Swiggy Snacc, Bistro by Blinkit and Zepto Cafe are proceeding with caution in this space, despite having a clear advantage in some ways. 

So in the meanwhile, there’s room for others. Here’s how Rebel Food is building QuickiES to take on the three biggest players right now. 

Rebel Foods Takes On Quick Delivery Giants

Food delivery is seeing a mini renaissance in India with the success of Quick Commerce unlocking new consumer behaviour in the metro and opening up insights into the execution of a similar models for other categories. 

Swiggy Instamart, Zepto and Blinkit spent billions to perfect this model for grocery deliveries, and now it’s being extended to everything. All three themselves have quick food delivery apps, and others such as Bengaluru-based Swish and Delhi-based Zing have also looked to attract first adopters. 

While Swish raised $2 Mn from Accel, the advantage is clearly with Swiggy and Zomato, and to some extent Zepto, which has enough capital to outlast new players. 

So how is Rebel going to compete against Swiggy and Zomato, who not only have more restaurant partners, but also dark stores set up in every corner of Tier I cities and metros? And what advantages can it count on in this fight?

Currently, QuickiES is only running as a pilot in Mumbai and this will serve as a test bed to refine the product before expanding it to other cities. The QuickiES menu includes dishes from Rebel’s house of brands (seen above).

But it will not be the full menu that these brands serve through Zomato and Swiggy, which does make it less attractive for consumers. At this moment, only those items that can be prepared within a short window are available.

Besides food from these brands, Rebel Foods will also deliver coffee and snacks through its own brand Slay Coffee and other restaurant and brand partners. Slay Coffee, a cloud kitchen brand which was shuttered, has been revived for QuickiES.

While Kocchar said it is too early to give names of any such brands, this partnership will definitely take some pressure off Rebel’s own kitchens. 

The CEO’s emphasis was clearly on preparing food in real time. He said everything is prepared fresh in HACCP-Certified kitchens, and Rebel Foods would not compromise on the food quality.

“For categories like snacks and quick bites—including samosas, bread pakoras, puffs, and more—we do not have strong brand pull. Therefore, this range of menu will be managed by our trusted vendor partners,” Kocchar added.

Inside The QuickiES Kitchen 

Having been founded in 2011 by Kallol Banerjee and Jaydeep Barman, Rebel Foods is a pioneer in the cloud kitchen space, starting with Faasos in Pune and Mumbai, and today expanding overseas. 

Kocchar, who joined Rebel Foods in 2012 as a Senior Vice President, Operations, says this wealth of experience and operational knowhow has given Rebel Foods data that has served as a moat for so many years.

“We believe the key to delivering quality food fast is in our forecasting methods. We make sure there is ready availability of fresh food, all based on order projections. Our platform is equipped to handle all sorts of processes from baking to grilling to wok-based cooking, conveyor preparation of pizza, frying etc. And it’s all supported by a very robust tech infrastructure,” he claimed.

The tech includes Tracx, Rebel’s in-house logistics platform, which manages the order fulfilment process through smart driver allocation and ETA predictions.

Riders are assigned based on their proximity and their delivery records. Currently, Rebel Foods has a mixed fleet of full-time, part-time delivery partners, and third-party logistics services. Depending on demand surge for QuickiES orders, Rebel could look to scale its fleet in future.  

Where Rebel Foods Holds The Edge

After owning and operating hundreds of cloud kitchens for multiple brands, the logical thing for Rebel Foods was to launch its food delivery platform, which it did with EatSure. QuickiES is the reaction to the perception that consumer behaviour is shifting towards convenience — even in food delivery — rather than choice. 

Zomato and Swiggy built their empire on aggregation, but to some extent, that model is unsustainable at pan-India scale with the cost burdens of not only running a large marketplace and the delivery fleet. The more profitable model — at least at scale — would be owning the marketplace, the brands and the delivery fleet. 

Rebel Foods owns them all, while Zomato and Swiggy do not yet own restaurant brands. 

At the moment, EatSure’s scale cannot match Zomato or Swiggy, and without separate disclosures, it would be hard to estimate how much of Rebel Foods’ INR 1,400 Cr+ revenue (as of FY24) comes from the delivery app. 

But in the quick food delivery space, Rebel Foods has a couple of advantages. It already has 475 kitchens across 75 cities, which Kocchar claimed would be enough to power QuickiES. It has spent millions in building up around 10 brands, and is also bringing in international brands to India, and running their kitchens.
Having a large enough network to test out changes allows Rebel Foods a key advantage over Zomato and Swiggy, which have to either set up new kitchens or revamp existing dark stores. It can roll out new menu items across India more easily as long as it owns the recipe. 

While the company has plans to expand to 150-200 cities in India by 2028, this investment will not happen in the short term. One must understand that quick food delivery is a new idea and as such the model will only be improved over the next year or so. 

More and more restaurants will learn from the experience to improve their kitchens for the quick delivery age. More brands would enter into the snacks space to cater to new cities and markets. But till that happens, Rebel Foods has that one major advantage. 

And Where It Falls Behind 

But in terms of brand power, EatSure is still quite a way behind Swiggy and Zomato, and perhaps even Zepto. That will require a bigger push. 

The Rebel Foods app has an all time download of 10 Mn. This pales in comparison to Swiggy’s monthly transacting user base of 14.9 Mn and Zomato’s 20.5 Mn as of Q3 FY25. Data for SNACC and Bistro are likely to be only available after the next quarter. 

Zepto Cafe meanwhile claims to have reached 100K orders per day after relaunching sometime in 2024. So a big push on branding is likely to be seen in the next year or so.

Along the way, Rebel Foods has to smartly reallocate its investments towards brand presence and marketing on Swiggy and Zomato. Currently, 70% of Rebel Foods’ business comes from Swiggy and Zomato, Kocchar added. 

It will not be easy for Rebel to widen that revenue stream without spending more, as both delivery giants are hungry for higher revenue. Swiggy has already increased its commission fee from restaurants after listing. Zomato will not be far behind.  

While Kocchar denied that the company is raising new funding, Rebel Foods got a major $210 Mn raised at the end of last year from Temasek, which was likely raised to launch and expand EatSure and QuickiES. 

One does wonder how the new launch will impact Rebel Foods profitability. It incurred a loss of INR 375 Cr in FY24, almost half of what it lost in FY23. Kocchar did not comment on the numbers for FY25. 

As Rebel Foods plans to make a public market debut in the next 12- 24 months, QuickiES is more than an experiment. Even if it is shelved as an individual product, it will generate and contribute vital data for EatSure, which has a more conventional food delivery model. 

The entry of PE giants Temasek and KKR (through a secondary deal) is a big signal about Rebel Foods eyeing an IPO in the next two years. But before that a titanic battle lies ahead for the company that basically created cloud kitchens in India against food delivery pioneers.

---

Edited By Nikhil Subramaniam