Swiggy is India's largest and most valuable online food ordering and delivery platform. Founded in 2014, Swiggy is based out of Bangalore, India and, as of March 2019, was operating out of 100 Indian cities. In early 2019, Swiggy expanded into general product deliveries, under the brand name Swiggy Stores. In September 2019, Swiggy launched instant pick up and drop service Swiggy Go. The service is used to pick up and drop off a diverse array of items, including laundry and document or parcel deliveries to business clients and retail customers.
History
In 2013 two founders, Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy, designed an e-commerce website called "Bundl" to facilitate courier service and ship goods within India. Bundl was quickly paused, and they moved into the food delivery market. At the time, the food delivery sector was in turmoil as several notable startups, such as Foodpanda, TinyOwl and Ola Cafe were struggling. Majety and Reddy approached Rahul Jaimini, formerly with Myntra, and founded Swiggy and parent holding company Bundl Technologies in 2014. The company built out a dedicated delivery network and grew rapidly, primarily driven by the focus on logistics and locking in key resources. In May 2020, Swiggy laid off 1100 employees during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Investments and acquisitions
By 2015, the company began attracting external investments. The first was a $2 million investment from Accel and SAIF Partners, along with an additional investment from Norwest Venture Partners. The next year, Swiggy raised $15 million from new and existing investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners and Harmony Partners. In 2017, Naspers led an $80 million funding round into Swiggy. Swiggy received $100 million from China-based Meituan-Dianping and Naspers in 2018 and then later a string of investments took the company's valuation to over a $1 billion. In April 2020, Swiggy received around $43 million finding which valued the company at $3.6 billion. Swiggy acquired Bangalore-based Asian food start-up 48East in 2017. Swiggy later acquired Mumbai-based Scootsy Logistics, a struggling food and fashion delivery service. It also went on to acquire a milk delivery start-up in Mumbai called in an all cash deal. In 2019, the company invested Rs 31 crore in Mumbai-based ready-to-eat food brand Fingerlix. Swiggy plans to transition Scootsy’s partners, fleet and nudge consumers to its app and shut Scootsy by June-end 2020.
Partnerships
Swiggy has partnered with Burger King for providing delivery services. It has also partnered with Google Local Guide to facilitate customer reviews, and with Sodexo to enable customers for paying through meal cards. Swiggy has partnered with Indifi Technologies to facilitate a financing program for partner restaurants. 'Swiggy Money' is a digital wallet launched by Swiggy in partnership with ICICI Bank. The costumers who do not have an account in the ICICI bank can also avail the services. It will allow the customers to store money to pay for the orders.
