Rapido Ownly expands to Hyderabad, its second city

Rapido extends its zero-commission food delivery app Ownly to Hyderabad, utilizing bike-taxi captains to bypass high restaurant fees charged by incumbents like Swiggy and Zomato.

Written by FE Bureau

September 26, 2026 01:27 IST

Rapido Expands Zero-Commission Food Delivery Service ‘Ownly’ to Hyderabad

Rapido has launched its food delivery service Ownly in Hyderabad, taking the zero-commission platform beyond Bengaluru for the first time. Under Ownly’s model, partner restaurants pay no commission or fees, and the platform instead relies on a delivery fee charged to customers.

Rapido did not disclose the delivery fee it will charge in Hyderabad or the number of restaurants live on the platform in the city. Orders will be delivered by Rapido’s existing network of bike taxi riders, whom the company calls captains, giving them a second source of earnings alongside rides. Ownly is available as a standalone app on iOS and Android, and within the Rapido app.

“Our model is simple: restaurants keep what they earn, customers pay only for their food and delivery, and nobody pays for anything in between. Bengaluru showed us that people respond to honesty in pricing, and we expect Hyderabad to hold us to it just as closely,” said Aravind Sanka, co-founder, Rapido and Ownly.

Rapido announced Ownly in June 2025 and began piloting it in August that year in Bengaluru’s Koramangala, HSR Layout and BTM Layout, before going citywide in March this year.

In Bengaluru, the service has crossed 60,000 daily orders, according to sources. It had onboarded more than 25,000 restaurants in the city by August, Sanka had told FE in an interview. Although the standalone app and the in-app service bot display a flat delivery fee of `25 per order, it is currently being waived. Rapido has not indicated how long the waiver will last.

The company has also promised not to charge any additional platform fees or packing charges.

Incumbents Zomato and Swiggy levy a platform fee of `17.58 per order inclusive of GST. Restaurants on the two platforms have argued through industry body NRAI that commissions can run as high as 30-40% of order value when payment and promotional charges are included.

Ownly’s expansion into Hyderabad is part of a road map that also includes Kolkata, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai, ahead of a pan-India launch, according to sources. The expansion comes after Rapido raised $240 million in May in a round led by Prosus, with WestBridge and Accel participating, at a post-money valuation of about $3 billion.

This article was first uploaded on September twenty-six, twenty twenty-six, at twenty-seven minutes past one in the night.