Meituan-backed Indian food delivery unicorn Swiggy launches new on-demand service

Swiggy, the Indian online food ordering and delivery start-up backed by Meituan Dianping, has launched an on-demand, intracity courier service to send small packages of nearly anything, including laundry, lunchboxes and documents.

This new last-mile delivery service, called Swiggy Go, will initially operate in the company’s home base of Bangalore, capital of the southwestern state of Karnataka and India’s third most populous city, and expand to more than 300 cities by next year, according to Sriharsha Majety, co-founder and chief executive of Swiggy, in a statement on Wednesday.

“Swiggy’s vision is to elevate the quality of life of urban consumers by offering unparalleled convenience,” Majety said. He indicated that Swiggy Go will help expand everyday conveniences for consumers, five years after start-up started its operations.

The company also announced a “phased roll-out” of its on-demand grocery delivery service, Swiggy Stores, in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India’s fourth most populous city and capital of the state of Telangana. Users can order their daily groceries from family-run stores as well as supermarkets.

More than 300 merchants in Bangalore and about 200 in Hyderabad have signed up as partners for Swiggy Stores, according to the company. This service was initially run as a pilot programme in Gurugram, capital of the northern Indian state of Haryana, over the past six months.

Both Swiggy Go and Swiggy Stores are featured in the company’s popular food ordering app, available on both Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

The latest initiatives show that Swiggy, which has a current valuation of US$3.3 billion and more than 200,000 delivery contractors, is pushing forward with its business expansion to meet growing demand in the world’s second largest smartphone market, despite some backlash from the restaurant sector.

The National Restaurant Association of India last month criticised the country’s so-called food aggregator service providers over their steep discount policy. The association urged restaurant operators to “log out” of these providers’ platforms, which include Swiggy, Zomato, Uber Eats, EazyDiner and Magicpin. About 25,000 restaurants heeded that call and logged out of those platforms last month.

Swiggy’s latest efforts reflect the aggressive on-demand services expansion of its investor Meituan Dianping, which operates China’s largest food delivery platform and has more than 600,000 active daily couriers. The Hong Kong-listed company took part in Swiggy’s US$100 million Series F funding round in February last year. 

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