Food and grocery delivery apps

The app that brings dinner in half an hour and groceries in ten minutes

It is eleven at night in your flat in Bengaluru. You order biryani from a restaurant, and it arrives in half an hour. Then you notice there is no milk for the morning. You order milk and bread from another app, and they arrive in ten minutes.

The milk came from a dark store: a small warehouse near you, packed with groceries, that no customer ever enters. Groceries delivered in minutes from dark stores are called quick commerce.

Dinner in half an hour, milk in ten minutes: the biryani is cooked at a restaurant and ridden over, while the milk comes from a dark store, a small warehouse near you that no customer ever enters.

The software behind this is some of the hardest in commerce. It has to do three things:

forecast what each dark store must stock, hour by hour
route thousands of delivery riders in real time
promise a delivery time, and keep it

The three jobs behind a ten-minute order: forecasting what each dark store must stock hour by hour, routing thousands of riders in real time, and promising a delivery time and keeping it.

(More on the rider's last stretch to your door in Market Segment 30.5, Last-mile delivery and shipping software, in Industry Vertical 30, Supply chain and logistics.)

This is the first Market Segment of Industry Vertical 28, Foodtech and quick commerce. The kitchens that cook for these apps, and the restaurants' own systems, come in Market Segments 28.2 and 28.3.

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

This Market Segment has two sub-segments. The first covers India's delivery apps. The second covers the delivery apps of other countries that build their software in India.

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India's delivery apps
Delivery abroad, built in India

India's delivery apps

Food delivery, quick commerce, dark stores, and dining out

Back to the biryani and the milk from the start of this Market Segment. In India, these companies deliver both.

Swiggy

founded in Bengaluru, with engineers there, has the most job postings in this Market Segment, and in this whole Industry Vertical. It delivers restaurant food across hundreds of Indian cities. It also runs Dineout, for booking a table and eating out.

Instamart

with engineers in Bengaluru, is Swiggy's quick-commerce service. It builds the dark stores, the warehouse systems and the delivery that bring groceries in minutes.

Zepto

with engineers in Bengaluru, was founded in Mumbai as a ten-minute grocery app. It is one of the fastest-growing companies in Indian commerce. It has few job postings for a company of its size.

Delivery abroad, built in India

Food and grocery delivery in America, Europe and South-East Asia, and delivery run for other businesses

The same kind of app runs in other countries, and some of them build their software in India.

DoorDash

with engineers in Pune and Hyderabad, is America's largest food-delivery company. It also runs DoorDash Drive, a delivery service for other businesses that use its riders and its logistics engine, the software that plans the deliveries. (More on delivery networks run for other businesses in Market Segment 30.7, Courier and parcel delivery networks, in Industry Vertical 30, Supply chain and logistics.)

Deliveroo

with engineers in Bengaluru, is the British delivery app that DoorDash agreed to buy in 2025.

GoTo Group

with engineers in Bengaluru, is the Indonesian parent of Gojek, an everyday app for rides, payments and more. Its GoFood delivery service is inside that app. GoTo Group is a different company from GoTo, the maker of remote-support tools. (More on that GoTo in Market Segment 2.2, UCaaS and cloud phone systems, in Industry Vertical 2, Business communications.)

(More on an everyday app of the same kind, Grab, in Market Segment 26.6, On-demand services apps, in Industry Vertical 26, E-commerce and D2C brands.)

The dark store that stocks itself.

Ten-minute delivery works only if each dark store holds the right items for its few square kilometres. The stock has to be forecast by the hour, and restocked before it runs out. AI models make that forecast, set the rider's route and promise the time. India's quick-delivery apps compete on minutes, and they are among the most demanding users of these models anywhere. The milk in your flat at eleven at night was there because a model forecast it.

That is the delivery app: dinner in half an hour, groceries in ten minutes, and the forecasting and routing that make it possible.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What foodtech and quick commerce companies hire for.

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