🕹️50 shades of food delivery

Why Zomato, Swiggy, Licious, and Rebel Foods aren't the same

Nov 28, 2021

On the surface, Zomato, Swiggy, Licious, and Rebel Foods are the same: all of them deliver food. Without thinking, we put all of them in the same category: "food delivery startups".

But this broad generalization is wrong.

I’ve written about all these companies in this newsletter, and one thing I’ve seen is that food delivery is just one part of their business. Usually, they do lots of other stuff apart from food delivery.

For example, Zomato started as a website to list restaurants in your area. Today, restaurant listing is a very small part of the zomato business model. It does much more: food delivery, raw materials supply, dining reservation, etc.

Swiggy started with food delivery and is now doing alcohol delivery and grocery delivery.

Rebel Foods started with a fast food shop in Pune, and now it’s the biggest cloud kitchen in the world.

Licious started with meat delivery, and today it’s a well-trusted meat brand in the country.

You get the point, right?

All these "food delivery startups" are not the same. Once you look closer, they are very different.

That's why I'm calling this article "50 shades of food delivery". In this article, I'll tell you about:

Zomato: Verticalized around restaurants🍽️
Swiggy: Horizontalized around delivery🚚
Licious: Verticalized around meat🍗
Rebel Foods: Horizontalized around cloud kitchens🌩️

One last point before starting: Instead of writing lots of text and boring you like the previous newsletters, I have made lots of diagrams to explain the content. I hope you will find it easy to understand.

Ready? Let’s go🚀🚀

Zomato: Verticalized around restaurants🍽️

Zomato started as a restaurant listing website(foodiebaydotcom): they listed the restaurant name and address and phone number and menu and ratings.

Today, they have expanded much beyond this, but they are still defined by their roots: restaurants. Their whole business model is centered around restaurants.

Dine-in: Customers can reserve seats at restaurants

Food delivery: Restaurants can home deliver food to customers. Thus more sales for restaurants without any extra effort.

Hyperpure: Supplies restaurants with fresh and high-quality ingredients, like antibiotic residue-free chicken, bought from responsible farmers.

Marketing solutions: Pretty obvious name. provides marketing tools to restaurants to attract and engage customers.

After seeing all this, Zomato's goal is clear: to become a full-stack restaurant platform.

That's why Zomato has verticalized itself around restaurants:

Zomato wants to provide raw materials to the restaurants, bring customers to the restaurants, and help restaurants deliver food to customers. As you can see, food delivery is just one part of the Zomato ecosystem.

In the future, Zomato also plans to have its own payment option so that restaurants can accept payments easily.

Swiggy: Horizontalized around delivery🚚

Swiggy started with one goal: food delivery.

Over the years, they have spent a lot of time and money to build an awesome delivery fleet.

This awesome delivery fleet is the reason why Swiggy is able to pick up food from restaurants and deliver it to us so fast.

But somewhere along the way, they had an idea: We have built such an awesome delivery network. Why use it only for food? Why not use it for everything?

That's why Swiggy has branched into delivering other things, like liquor, medicines, and general items.

Last year, they launched a grocery delivery service called Swiggy Genie. It was also powered by Swiggy's delivery network.

You get the idea, right?

Swiggy is using its delivery network in a lot of different use cases. That's why we say that Swiggy has a horizontal business model. This diagram will make it clear:

As you can see, food delivery is just one part of their business. They are doing other types of delivery as well.

In the future, Swiggy plans to expand its delivery fleet to even more use cases. They have also announced 15-minute grocery delivery, again only possible because of the delivery network.

Licious: Verticalized around meat🍗

Licious is a meat brand. They buy high-quality meat from poultry farmers, purify it in Licious processing centers, take orders on the Licious app/website, and deliver it to customers through Licious delivery partners.

Thus, Licious is also a vertical business model. While Zomato had verticalized itself around restaurants, Licious has verticalized itself around meat. This diagram will make it clear:

As you can see, food delivery is just one part of their business. They do lots of other stuff as well.

Laser-focus on meat has turned Licious into a dominant player in the meat market.

Licious has been expanding its business around meat: at first, it just sold raw meat to people(ready to cook category). Now it also sells ready-to-eat meat.

Rebel Foods: Horizontalized around cloud kitchens🌩️

Rebel Foods is another great food delivery concept.

They make the food in cloud kitchens, sell it on its own website and app, plus on swiggy and zomato as well. For delivery, they have their own delivery partners, plus they also use swiggy and zomato's delivery fleet.

Thus, Rebel Foods is also a horizontal business model. While Swiggy horizontalized around its delivery network, Rebel Foods has horizontalized around its cloud kitchens.

This diagram will make it clear:

Rebel uses its cloud kitchens to cook food for multiple food brands: Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, Oven Story Pizza, etc. Plus it also sells the cloud kitchen network to other food brands like Wendy's under the Rebel Launcher program.

This completes today's article. I hope you got my point: all food delivery startups are not the same. Their business models are very different, and in the future, as these startups continue to evolve and grow, they will be even more different. In the future, we won't call them food delivery startups because they would be doing much more than food delivery.

Zomato would be providing more tools and solutions to restaurants. Swiggy would be doing even more types of hyperlocal delivery. Licious will be doing a wider variety of nonveg food, and it would also get into the poultry business. Rebel Foods would be doing even more cloud kitchen business.

This wraps up today’s newsletter. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

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What are your thoughts on this article? Let me know in the comments👇

Integral🕹

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