Direct Ordering Math for an Indian Restaurant

Most of the break-even articles written about direct ordering are worked in US dollars, against US commission rates, at a US subscription price. That is three numbers an Indian restaurant cannot use. This one is worked in rupees, at the price Devfood actually publishes for India, and it is honest about the one number we could not verify.

The two cost models, in rupees

A marketplace charges a percentage of every order. Your cost rises with your sales; a good month is an expensive month.

A subscription inverts that. Devfood’s Indian price for one to three locations is ₹2,100 a month per location, with no commission and no per-order fee. Two hundred orders or two thousand, the bill is the same. From your fourth location the rate is ₹1,800, and from your tenth it is ₹1,575 — the whole account moves to the lower rate, not just the new site.

That price is not a currency conversion of the US figure. In the US the same plan is $79 per location, and converting that into rupees would produce a number that has nothing to do with what an Indian restaurant pays for software. India is priced against what Indian restaurants already pay for a comparable stack — the method is explained in why ordering software should not be priced by exchange rate.

The commission rate — what is and is not published

The break-even depends on one input we cannot supply for you: the effective rate your marketplace takes.

We checked the restaurant-partner pages of both major Indian aggregators on 2 September 2026. Neither publishes a commission rate on them — Zomato’s partner page loads a sign-up shell and Swiggy’s partner site goes straight to a login. Rates are set per restaurant in the onboarding agreement, so the only trustworthy figure is the one on your statement.

So the numbers below use a stated assumption: an effective rate somewhere between 15% and 25% of order value, after the delivery fee passed to the customer is excluded. Take last month’s payout statement, divide total deductions by gross order value, and replace the assumption with your own figure. The formula does not care which number you use; it only cares that it is yours.

The break-even formula

break-even direct sales per month = monthly subscription ÷ effective commission rate

At ₹2,100 a month for a single location:

Turn that into orders. At an average ticket of ₹350 and a 20% effective rate, the subscription pays for itself once 30 orders a month come through your own channel — one a day. At a ₹250 ticket it is 42 orders. At ₹500 it is 21.

Everything above that line is margin you keep rather than remit. A restaurant doing ₹3 lakh a month through marketplaces at a 20% effective rate is remitting ₹60,000 a month in commission. Moving a third of that volume direct saves roughly ₹20,000 a month against a ₹2,100 subscription.

What the formula leaves out

Card processing still exists. Devfood connects your own payment gateway account, and the gateway bills its processing fee to you directly — there is no markup in the middle. Which gateways are available depends on the market, so ask us which ones apply to India before you plan around one. Compare commission above processing, which is how a marketplace statement usually breaks it out anyway.

Cash on delivery is a channel here, not an edge case. Devfood supports it alongside card and wallet payments, and a cash order carries no gateway fee at all. If a meaningful share of your direct orders will be cash, your effective saving per order is the full commission.

Setup and billing terms. On monthly billing there is a one-time $299 setup fee for the app-store publishing, domain and go-live work; on annual billing it is included, and you pay ten months for twelve. Fold that into a first-year calculation rather than a monthly one.

Third-party costs that are yours either way. An Apple developer membership for the iOS app, SMS for OTP sign-in, and map API usage for addresses and live tracking are billed by those providers, not by us. They are small, but they are real, and they are listed on the FAQ rather than hidden.

What it leaves out — in your favour

The customer becomes yours. On a marketplace the platform holds the relationship, and reordering happens inside their app, beside your competitors. On your own channel the customer, their order history and the ability to bring them back with a voucher or a wallet credit belong to you. That is the whole reason to run the channel, and the break-even formula cannot price it.

No menu inflation. Restaurants commonly list higher prices on marketplaces to absorb commission. A direct channel lets you list the real price, which is a reason for a regular to switch on its own.

Busy months stop being expensive months. Diwali week costs the same as a quiet Tuesday in August.

What it leaves out — against you

A direct channel does not come with a marketplace’s audience. You have to point your own customers at it: a link on Instagram and WhatsApp, a QR code on the bill and the packaging, a line on the receipt. The restaurants that do best treat the marketplace as acquisition for strangers and their own app as the default for regulars — the first order is discovered on the marketplace, the tenth is placed direct.

That is also why the break-even number matters. You do not need to move your whole volume; you need to move about 30 orders a month at a ₹350 ticket. Your regulars cover that on their own.

Running your own numbers

1. Pull last month’s marketplace payout statement.
2. Effective rate = total deductions ÷ gross order value.
3. Break-even sales = ₹2,100 ÷ that rate.
4. Break-even orders = break-even sales ÷ your average ticket.

If that order count looks small next to your monthly volume — for most established restaurants it does — the question is no longer whether the channel pays for itself, but how quickly you can point your regulars at it. Book a demo and bring a statement; the calculation takes five minutes on a call.