The Nielsen Global E-Commerce and The New Retail Report April 2015 said that a quarter of the global consumers (survey respondents) are already ordering grocery online and over 55 percent are willing to use it in the future. This is, what the experts are calling, the age of the digital milkman.

Just a year ago, experts predicted that the online grocery delivery market would see explosive growth, and it has. Major players, like Google, Amazon and Walmart, along with the new favorite Instacart, have all expanded their same-day delivery services with additional operational infrastructure.

Demand and meteoric growth of these businesses have not just seen increased venture capitalist involvement but also an increasing number of tech companies in the mix. In fact, grocery delivery startups have outpaced the growth of their meal delivery counterparts, and are leading the financing in the food sector globally.

Instacart is not the only startup that has revolutionized the grocery delivery segment, according to Food+Tech Connect. The online delivery service Postmates, which launched in 2012, has grown tenfold in one year. It tied with leading retailers in the Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington D.C. areas. Its meteoric success is attributed to robust logistics software. It had already hit 1 million deliveries last year and raised $16 million to expand across North America.

Of course, Instacart with its innovative partnership model with retailers that allows them to operate with ridiculously low overheads, is still a model for growth. The explosive growth for this sector is seeing more players joining the fray. We now have UberEssentials from Uber, which promises to offer 10-minute grocery delivery as well.

Among the giants who have ventured into this new territory we have Google’s Express delivery service, Amazon Fresh, the same-day grocery delivery service and Wal-Mart To Go, the retailer’s on-demand delivery service. Wal-Mart is also planning to test a grocery delivery service using Uber and Lyft, starting with Denver and Phoenix, according to The Wall Street Journal. A shopper can place a grocery order online. Then, a Wal-Mart employee will select and pack the merchandise. The store will then hail an Uber or Lyft driver to pick up the order and deliver it to the customer. This pilot program has been conceived to beat the growing influence of AmazonFresh and is already witnessing a $2 billion investment to boost e-commerce sales. What we can see is a hot battleground for the grocery delivery market.

Along with startups like Instacart, we now have new favorites like DoorDash Inc., Uber, and even the U.S. Postal Service vying to bring goods to people’s homes along with Amazon. Smartphones and apps have been integrated into these services to make life easier.

According to CB Insights, a record $5.5 billion investment was made to mobile food delivery apps in 2015 alone. Increased backing from VCs is one reason one can see such an explosive growth for the food delivery startups, which on the other hand are singlehandedly changing the future of the food sector. Valued at $700 million, DoorDash, has managed to secure another secured $127 million in March this year, bringing its total funding to $186.7 million since it launched in July 2013, according to San Antonio Express-News.

Along with the growth, we also see simultaneous maturation of these services. For example, we have Instacart partnering with personalized nutrition services, like PlateJoy. Now, they will not only offer same-day delivery of groceries but items that will be perfectly tailored to a customer’s taste preferences and health. PlateJoy’s technology will convert a person’s nutritional profile, using more than 50 data points, into personalized weekly menus. Based on their recommendations, one can order custom groceries via Instacart’s one-hour delivery service.

There is a lot of interest in the pre-planned meal and meal kit options. The popular meal-kit service segment of the market is set to grow between $3-$5 billion over the next decade, according to Technomic, a food-industry consulting firm. While the meal delivery companies raised $352 million in 2015, the grocery delivery companies had already raised $429 million globally. The overall market will grow at a phenomenal pace, to about $180 billion by 2020 in China alone, according to Forbes.