Open any food delivery or quick commerce app today, and the final bill rarely matches the item price, thanks to a growing stack of platform fees and sundry charges.
Or spend a few minutes on Reddit’s consumer threads and social media and watch the frustration boil over: users aren’t just griping about food prices anymore; they’re raging against the layers of charges piled on at checkout.
The biggest flagbearers of this platform fee movement — Zomato and Swiggy — jacked up the surcharge last week. What started at ₹2 in August 2023 has now hit ₹14.9 on Zomato and ₹17.58 on Swiggy as of March 2026. That’s a staggering 500-700% surge in under three years.
What’s worse is that platform fees don’t even spare paid subscribers. Zomato Gold or Swiggy One members still fork over platform fees, packaging charges, and GST even though they might save a few rupees on the delivery fee. And that’s just the basic platform fee; in addition, we have late-night surcharges, surge pricing, and rain fees. Each seems small, but the sum definitely weighs down your final bill.
It’s not just food delivery of course. Quick commerce has taken this to a new level. Blinkit slaps a ₹20 “small cart fee” on orders under ₹99 while other platforms have a shadow fee of some kind along with the standard delivery fee.
This playbook now infects everything: BookMyShow’s “convenience fees” on tickets, Urban Company’s service charges, Uber or Ola’s platform levies.
It may be called platform fee, handling charge, surge fee or anything else, but the result is the same: A tax on online convenience that seems to have become the industry norm in the past two years.
The mandatory fee for access to these services can be explosive at scale in terms of revenue, across India’s 500 Mn+ digital consumers.
Even with a conservative estimate, the revenues earned as ‘platform fee’ will hit ₹6,000-8,000 Cr annually across the platforms we have looked at below.
The resentment runs deep. A 2025 LocalCircles survey found 50% of users hit with these fees on most online buys; 90% crave platforms that ditch them entirely.
In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that platform fees are the new take rate, quietly taxing India’s convenience boom, especially as the Indian ecommerce market is projected to surpass $400 Bn by 2030.
Platforms have long earned via percentage commissions, such as a classic 20% cut on a ₹1,000 sale means a ₹200 take rate. Food and grocery delivery added delivery fees on top.
In other cases, cut-throat competition has pushed platforms towards slashing or completely foregoing their seller commissions. Amazon and Flipkart both have slashed their commissions recently for smaller sellers. Meesho and Ownly don’t charge any commission from their seller partners.
So commissions are being phased out, and a platform fee is being put in place instead.
According to Aravind Sanka, founder of Rapido, which operates food delivery app Ownly, commissions at the restaurant end are now directly being transmitted to the user through increased menu prices.
Earlier, these prices were cross-subsidised by discounts that were shared by restaurants and platforms. Now, as platforms chase profitability, the entire discount load has fallen back on restaurants.
“In this situation, lower pricing to drive growth has become more and more difficult. In a scenario where growth stalls, platforms always look to ROI – heaven increase in platform costs,” he added.
Further, as Renee Cosmetics cofounder Ashutosh Valani explains, quick commerce platforms, in that sense, are trying to balance both sides of the equation. For most, the cost of procurement and delivery already exceed what it charges. Most are operating at a loss at the unit level, as evident from the negative P&L books every quarter.
At the same time, there is clear consumer demand for immediacy. If a user wants a ₹150 sunscreen delivered instantly, without stepping out or spending time and effort, that convenience comes at a premium.
“The trade-off, then, is unavoidable. Either consumers absorb part of the cost, or the system continues to run at a deficit. And if losses persist, prices will inevitably rise over time,” he added.
Marketplaces are refining the platform fee into a highly adaptable lever — one that fits neatly across ecommerce. Take Amazon’s ₹5 marketplace fee: small enough to overlook, but highly effective at scale. It allows platforms to sustain low or even zero seller fees, while passing incremental costs to consumers — often softened by behaviours like bundling items to unlock free delivery.
Quick commerce has different triggers because of higher order frequency among the most active users. This is why platforms like to create the perception that everything is discounted and then add a platform fee at the end to nullify the discounts. Zepto, Swiggy Instamart and Blinkit have all adopted this play — using deep discounts and promotional offers to offset the visibility of delivery and handling fees.
Food delivery sits somewhere in between. Menu inflation, combined with layered add-ons, is pushing some users towards ordering directly from restaurants. Others continue to stay — driven by convenience or periodic deep discounts.
From a consumer perspective, what began as a ₹2 experiment is now a ₹15-₹40 habit and for many hardly unreasonable.
“If a customer were to step out to collect a ₹250 order personally, the actual cost would extend far beyond the price of the food itself. There is fuel expenditure, travel time, and the ever-present risk of road accidents or damage to the vehicle. In that context, paying ₹40 for doorstep convenience appears less like an extra burden and more like a rational trade-off,” an analyst told Inc42.
And this convenience tax is more prevalent in metros and tier I cities because of how habituated consumers are to ordering through apps.
Early signs of friction are emerging. The Competition Commission of India is probing pricing policies, predatory fees and market dominance in the consumer services and ecommerce space. Another alternative is ONDC, which is pushing to make digital commerce more transparent and create seller-first policies.
New entrants like Rapido’s Ownly are experimenting with flat-fee structures, but will need to prove this works at scale.
Rapido founder Sanka believes that until customers have more alternative choices, the platform fee reliance will only grow. “Everyone will have to get used to higher prices, and a section of users will continue to be locked out.”
The real winners, for now, are the platforms, which are now earning millions through these incremental charges that seem to grow by the week. There are some signs of pushback building and regulatory pressure, but till this grows to a crescendo, the “convenience tax” and platform fee era is here to stay.
Rentomojo’s IPO: Furniture-focused rental commerce company RentoMojo filed its DRHP with market regulator SEBI for its upcoming IPO, which will comprise a fresh issue of shares worth up to ₹150 Cr and an offer for sale component of up to 2.84 Cr shares. The company’s cofounder and former COO, Ajay Nain, filed a petition to halt the IPO procedure, alleging oppression and mismanagement.
Fast&Up Raises ₹300 Cr: D2C health and wellness startup Fullife Healthcare, which operates active nutrition brand Fast&Up and beauty nutrition brand Chicnutrix, raised ₹300 Cr in its Series D round led by Elev8 Venture Partners. While Fast&Up is a dietary supplement brand, Chicnutrix is a skincare brand offering products like serums, face masks, and glutathione and keratin effervescent tablets.
BeastLife Fundraise: Fitness influencer Gaurav Taneja’s D2C nutrition Brand BeastLife raised ₹20 Cr in its pre-Series A funding round to expand its team and operations. Simultaneously, it is planning a gradual offline push, with an initial focus on select geographies and experimenting with formats.
Swish Bags Capital: Quick food delivery startup Swish raised $38 Mn to fuel its 10-minute food delivery offering across urban cities. Additionally, the startup will be investing in team expansion, kitchen automation and supply chain infrastructure.
Cloud kitchens working with aggregators are in a bind. While aggregators can easily flex their pricing power by increasing platform fees, cloud kitchens cannot do the same for menu prices. What’s the way out?
Sagar Daryani, the cofounder of Wow! Momo, says one of the biggest challenges is to maintain margins, while staying with menu price bands that are almost non-negotiable for cloud kitchens, i.e. ₹99 or ₹199. To get there, he suggests:
The post India’s Convenience Economy Is Getting Expensive appeared first on Inc42 Media.
