Swiggy’s Toing closes in on Zomato with 33 million weekly users

MUMBAI: The food-delivery price war is getting a new appetiser, and Swiggy’s budget-focused Toing is serving up some striking numbers. The app has reached around 33 million weekly active users, putting it at roughly 96 per cent of Zomato’s 35 million, according to brokerage CLSA data based on Sensor Tower.

What makes the number notable is the speed. Toing is only about a year old, yet its weekly active user base is already approaching that of the established food-delivery platform. Swiggy’s main app has around 40 million weekly active users, although that figure includes its quick-commerce business and is therefore not directly comparable with Zomato’s food-delivery number.

Toing added about 1.8 million weekly active users in the last week of August, while Zomato lost around 1.7 million. Swiggy’s broader super-app user base declined by about 1.9 million over the same period.

The momentum is even more visible in downloads. Toing recorded 14.5 million downloads so far this quarter, ahead of Zomato at 12.4 million and Swiggy at 10.1 million. Its year-to-date downloads have reached 34.7 million, according to CLSA.

But there is a catch in the cart. Zomato still leads on daily active users, suggesting that while Toing has built a sizeable weekly audience quickly, it has yet to match the frequency with which established users open and order from the platform.

Toing is Swiggy’s attempt to tackle one of food delivery’s biggest sticking points: price. Operating separately from the main Swiggy app, it targets customers looking for lower-priced meals and has expanded to nearly 50 cities.

Swiggy has said two out of every three users acquired through Toing are either new to Swiggy or returning after being inactive. If those users represent genuinely incremental demand rather than customers simply migrating from the main app, Toing could help expand the overall online food-delivery market.

The bigger question, however, is whether a larger user count can translate into enough orders and sustainable economics.

Zomato parent Eternal has so far resisted launching a separate budget food-delivery app. During Eternal’s Q4 FY26 earnings call, CFO Akshant Goyal said the company was not convinced that a Toing-like platform addressed a clear problem for consumers or restaurants.

Instead, Eternal has been developing Bistro as its lower-priced food-delivery experiment. Founder Deepinder Goyal has also questioned the durability of price-led customer acquisition, arguing that lower prices can generate traction without necessarily creating sustainable economics.

Toing’s rise comes as affordability becomes an increasingly crowded battleground.

Rapido’s zero-commission food-delivery platform Ownly has crossed 50,000 daily orders in Bengaluru, according to recent reports. That represents roughly 10 per cent of the city’s estimated 500,000–600,000 daily food orders.

Flipkart is also preparing to enter the category. The Walmart-backed company has begun testing its food-delivery service, Eat In, among employees in Bengaluru, with a wider employee rollout expected before a consumer launch. The service is being built with ONDC and is expected to use a lower-commission model for restaurants.

For Swiggy, Toing’s numbers arrive against a backdrop of pressure on food-delivery economics. CLSA downgraded Swiggy to ‘Hold’ after its Q1 FY27 results, citing weaker-than-expected food-delivery growth and the impact of Toing on contribution margins.

Swiggy is simultaneously working to improve the economics of its broader business. Instamart reached contribution-margin break-even in May, although the quick-commerce business still reported a contribution margin of -0.2 per cent for the June quarter.

That leaves Toing with a deceptively simple task: turn plenty of app opens into plenty of orders, and plenty of orders into sustainable margins.

For Swiggy, the 33 million weekly users show that consumers are willing to follow the value proposition. The real test now is whether they will keep coming back and whether the numbers add up when they do.