India’s food delivery nears Meituan economics

A Bernstein report, covered by Entrackr on 11 September, finds that Indian food delivery platforms are earning close to what Meituan earns on each order, despite operating in a market Bernstein sizes far below China’s.

Start with what is actually 22X, because the headline does not say. It is the market. Bernstein puts China’s food delivery market at around $230 billion in CY25 against over $10 billion in India in FY26, and describes China’s as nearly 22X larger. It is not order volume, not revenue and not company size. The two figures also sit on different clocks, a calendar year for China and a fiscal year for India, which is worth holding in mind before treating the ratio as precise.

The per-order numbers are the substance. At its Q2 2024 peak profitability Meituan made $0.3 of operating profit per order on an average order value of $7.2. In Q1 FY27 Zomato posted $0.2 of adjusted EBITDA per order on GOV per order of $5.2, and Swiggy $0.2 on $5.4. The gap is narrow, but the measures are not identical: operating profit and adjusted EBITDA are different lines, and the Chinese figure is a peak from roughly two years earlier rather than a current quarter. The comparison is directionally useful and should not be read as exact.

Read properly, the finding is about cost per order rather than scale. Earning a similar absolute amount on a smaller ticket means the cost base per order here is tighter. It does not mean the businesses are close in size, because profit pools follow volume. Bernstein’s own figures make that plain: Meituan’s food delivery GTV annualised from the March 2026 quarter is $164 billion and its FY24 food delivery operating profit was $4.9 billion, against annualised GOV of $6 billion for Zomato. Meituan also holds around three-fourths of China’s food delivery order share.

The headroom case rests on penetration. Food delivery accounted for 15 percent of India’s food services market in FY26 against 27 percent in China in FY25, and Bernstein notes Chinese consumer incomes are significantly higher. That gap is an argument for room to grow, not evidence that the growth arrives. For anyone selling into or alongside these platforms, the operating read is that efficiency per order is already competitive by global standards, and the variable left is volume.