Swiggy - The OG of Food & Hyperlocal Delivery

The proven Baap of online food ordering and delivery platform -Swiggy comes with an interesting gospel about its founding fathers Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy

Sriharsha Majesty, also known as Harsha, was born in a family of entrepreneurs. So eventually he would also turn into an entrepreneur? Partially yes!

But what made him different was his level of understanding, perseverance and choices in life that he stood by no matter what

 “Entrepreneurship was always in my blood. My father runs a restaurant in Vijayawada, and plans to invest in the hospitality sector. My mother is a doctor by profession and has her own clinic. She is also planning to start her own chain of beauty parlours. Seeing my family members being in charge, and taking control of what they do was an inspiration from early years.” says Harsha.

So what drove young Harsha to End up with Swiggy?

The Founder of RedBus Phanindra Sama in the year 2006 discussed his venture plans of going public, which Harsha thought was bad idea. But later he saw the growth of RedBus, which instilled the confidence of taking the "entrepreneurship" plunge. That’s when he got his inspiration.

He discussed this idea with his co-founder Nandan Reddy and both of them saw a huge opportunity in the ecommerce industry with successful platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, e-Bay and more. One thing both were sure of was doing a business that has a mix of technology, as well as offline.

Initial Idea

The founding fathers saw the potential and opportunity in the unorganised logistics and shipping sector within the ecommerce industry. Hence in August 2013 they designed an e-commerce website called Bundl to facilitate courier service and shipping within India.

The problem during that time was that the vendors were not able to contact Blue dart and FedX.

The opportunity that the founders saw was that not only vendors but people in general would be able to ship from one place to another. So they joined hands with small services like Dtdc, regional services like Fed X and blue dart. The motto was networking and making shipping, logistics & transactions easier.

Things didn't go well as planned as they required technical skills. And by the time they had figured out the product, the market dynamics had completely changed. Platforms like flipkart and e-bay had decided to ship products themselves. This in turn made the market smaller. Hence they decided to shut down Bundl within a year as it was no longer worth the opportunity cost.

The first failure of Bundl made the founders take a step back and realise that logistic companies’ are bad at technology and that was a cue for them to start another venture: intersection of technology and logistics. But that did not stop them from taking another diverse road.

Interestingly that time Ola and Uber were gaining success through their on-app booking which made them realise the potential of hyper local delivery.

And that is how it started.

The genesis of Swiggy.

As the concept of hyperlocal suggests, Swiggy started its initial deliveries in selected parts of cities like Bengaluru and Gurugram. Within four years of its inception, Swiggy successfully became a hyperlocal delivery platform and a household name for online food delivery.

Acquisition (Supr Daily)

Along with growth and funding came the opportunity to grow inorganically. Swiggy, acquired a small milk delivery start-up in Mumbai called SuprDaily in an all-cash deal. With SuprDaily’s technology for sourcing dairy products quickly and Swiggy’s fleet, the company will be able to make deliveries across most major geographies on almost everything. Thus extending their product portfolio to get further deep into hyperlocal delivery space of milk & daily grocery.

Product Innovation

After the success, in February 2019 Swiggy launched its ‘Swiggy Stores' that aimed at delivering daily essentials including groceries to customers in tier-1 and tier-2 cities. This move of adding another category within hyperlocal delivery space was to utilise the existing delivery fleet. Food ordering was mostly during morning, lunch or dinner. Leaving fleet unutilized during rest of the hours.

It was also a competitive move to take on its rival – Zomato, as they had started delivering groceries to households in over 80 cities. Another addition made by Swiggy was Swiggy Go - introduced in September, last year to counter Google-backed Dunzo. The rebranded service now, called Swiggy Genie, is designed to let users order stuff from any store that they want, not just the Swiggy partners, including people-2-people courier.

In August 2020, the company launched their groceries delivery platform called InstaMart that promises to deliver essentials in 45 mins.

InstaMart was launched in Gurugram to compete against Bigbasket, Flipkart Quick, Amazon Fresh, JioMart and Dunzo

The story does not end here.

The company has tied up with various offline retailers including Vishal Mega Mart as well as fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands such as Marico. 

Swiggy, ANRA has received approval to start drone trials for food delivery. An ANRA Technologies-led consortium, of which Swiggy is a part, has received clearance from government authorities to commence drone trials for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations in India. The flight team would conduct BVLOS food and medical package deliveries in Uttar Pradesh’s Etah and Punjab’s Rupnagar districts using ANRA’s SmartSkies technology.

Swiggy has also signed an agreement with Reliance BP mobility Ltd to build an ecosystem of electric vehicle battery swapping stations across the country.

With more than 10 Cr mobile application installations and MNs of monthly active users, Swiggy has become the household name for anyone and everyone who wants to order in food, groceries or P2P courier. Tying up with more than 25,000 restaurant owners, Swiggy has its own fleet of local delivery boys with operations across 13 cities in India, including Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and more.

What started as an experiment in the field of e-commerce logistics is now a giant company in the food & hyperlocal delivery ecosystem.

Swiggy Facts

No.of Employees: 10k+

Latest Funding Round: Series J

Total  Funding Amount: 3.7BN USD+

No.of Acqusitions: 4 (kint.io, Supr Daily, Scootsy, 48East)

Reference:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/swiggy-anra-get-approval-to-start-drone-trials-for-food-delivery/articleshow/83574991.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

https://english.lokmat.com/business/swiggy-reliance-bp-mobility-partner-to-build-ev-ecosystem

https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/swiggy-grocery-delivery-genie-pickup-drop-service-coronavirus-outbreak-2208816

https://yourstory.com/2018/04/learnings-failure-making-swiggy/amp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiggy