Zomato and Swiggy Deductions: How ₹1 Lakh in Orders Can Shrink to ₹40,000

Beyond the commission headline

In August 2026 The News Minute published a detailed report from Bengaluru that goes further than the usual complaint about commission percentages. It gathers named, on-the-record accounts from restaurant owners about how discounts and less visible charges cut into what they take home, and follows the talks that began when the city's restaurants threatened to leave the apps.

Why a 52-year-old Tibetan restaurant quit Swiggy

Shangrila, a Tibetan restaurant on Brigade Road, has been open for 52 years and has passed through three generations of owners without ever needing to advertise; word of mouth did that for free. Its current owner, Kunga, ended an eight-year relationship with Swiggy about six months before the report. Swiggy's cut had been 24–25% on each order, but Kunga told The News Minute that "money wasn't really the reason". What bothered Kunga was the way Swiggy handled the partnership: in all that time, no one from the company checked how the restaurant was getting on.

Why the 30% commission is not the whole story

PC Rao, the Bangalore Hotels Association's (BHA) honorary president, told The News Minute that a restaurant doing ₹1 lakh of business on a delivery platform may end up with somewhere between ₹40,000 and ₹45,000 after all the deductions.

The report also notes that Ananth Narayan, who heads NRAI in Bengaluru, separately told ET Now that the commonly quoted 30% commission "is never 30%". Once a restaurant's share of discounts is added in, he said, the real burden comes to 40–60%.

Rao listed the charges that sit on top of commission:

• Advertisement fees
• Long-distance levies
• Collection charges
• Commission taken on the GST portion of the bill as well

Meghna Vakada, who is managing partner at Barley and Grapes Cafe, Whitefield, put base commission alone at 20–30% of each order before any of those extras. Unless your order volume is very high, she said, you are "hardly earning anything".

How discounting buys a higher ranking

Rao also described how the apps' ranking rewards restaurants that discount. By his account, running a discount pushes you to the top of the list; as an example, he said that paying ₹5,000 a week would make his eatery the first result a customer sees when searching for "masala dosa".

Vakada calls the result a "fear of missing out". When a neighbouring restaurant starts discounting and climbs the rankings, others feel they have to match it just to stay visible, whether or not the discount works for their own margins.

Rao further alleges that some limited-period promotions restaurants had signed up for were kept running by the platforms past the agreed end date, without the restaurant being told or asked to agree again.

A ₹50,000 promotion pitch

Ibrahim (not his real name) runs a café in Fraser Town that is listed on both apps but gets few orders from them. He told The News Minute that Swiggy asked him to pay ₹50,000, promising that the promotions would bring in over ₹2 lakh of business, on top of the commission he already paid. He said this is why it is easy for the platforms to "exploit new, small businesses". He still puts up with the arrangement, because the apps have become essential to running a food business, even when a particular promotional offer is hard to justify.

What the platforms agreed to

The BHA's boycott threat brought Swiggy and Zomato into talks on 6–7 August 2026. Both provisionally agreed to ask restaurants for consent before switching on any future promotion, and to review earlier campaigns that had run without approval. Restaurants pushed their boycott deadline back from 15 August to 31 August to see whether the problems were actually fixed in practice.

In a formal letter to Swiggy dated 7 August, the BHA also asked for:

• Four fees to be removed: long-distance, restaurant-sponsored delivery, restaurant cancellation and payment collection
• Nothing to come out of payouts except the commission that was agreed and statutory charges
• Service charges to be worked out on the food value alone, not on an amount that includes GST

The wider legal picture

The dispute runs alongside the Competition Commission of India (CCI) investigation into Zomato and Swiggy, which grew out of a complaint NRAI filed in 2022. There is a related front in quick commerce too. In February of the year before the report, a case came from the distributors' side: All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation, which represents 4 lakh distributors across the country, brought an antitrust complaint of its own targeting Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart over predatory pricing. Concerns about platform power, in other words, reach well beyond restaurant commission.

What this means for your restaurant

• Work out your effective deduction, not just your commission rate: add your discount contributions, collection charges, advertisement fees, long-distance levies and any commission on GST, then compare what reaches your bank with your gross order value.
• Check that no limited-period promotion is still running past the dates you agreed. The BHA's PC Rao alleges this happened in Bengaluru, and the platforms have provisionally agreed to seek consent before switching promotions on.
• Before paying for a promotion package, weigh the business it promises against the fee and the commission you will still owe on top.
• Decide on discounts from your own margins, not just to match a neighbour and hold your ranking.

Sources

1. When discounts cost dearly: Why Bengaluru restaurants are upset with Swiggy, Zomato — The News Minute

This article summarises the reporting and guides listed above; the figures belong to those sources and are attributed in the text. Check anything that affects your business against your own platform agreements, payout statements and advisers.