Startup of the Year Swiggy
Hunger Takes Them to the Top
Swiggy has bolstered India's
struggling food-tech industry by keeping the customer at the centre of its
business strategy
Startup of the Year
Swiggy
India's food-tech industry
has been going downhill largely because of weak business models and shoddy
execution in catering to hungry customers. At least one company, though, has
been able to swim against the tide with foresight, grit and tremendous business
smarts.
Swiggy , in a mere three
years, has been able to master the online food delivery experience. The startup
delivers food from at least 12,000 local restaurants, processing about 4
million orders a month across eight cities. To the delight of investors, it has
been able to trim delivery costs by 35% by charging a minimum fee and
additional charges during inclement weather. Swiggy is now experimenting with
cloud kitchens to take food from popular restaurants to multiple locations
beyond their immediate neighbourhoods.
“The ET Startup of the Year
Award is a humble testament to Swiggy's vision of changing the way India eats,
and the fantastic execution by the team,“ said chief executive Sriharsha
Majety, who cofounded Swiggy in 2014 with Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jaimini.
“It all boils down to the
quality of the service,“ he said. “For us, the battle that is front and centre
is how do we become the most convenient and most reliable food-ordering
platform. How do we offer the same pre-order and post-order experience in terms
of quality? By sharply focusing on customer experience and getting better at it
we have been able to consolidate our gains, continue to move the (cash) burn in
the right direction and come out of a hard year.“
Another characteristic
about Swiggy is its ability to create jobs. The food-ordering platform has a
20,000-strong delivery fleet. Swiggy is far from where it aims to be when it
comes to an ideal fleet size. “We are targeting a fleet size of about 1,00,000
over the next 5 years,“ said Majety .
“What really makes Swiggy
stand out is its focus on scaling the right way, which is scaling with customer
experience at the forefront,“ said Binny Bansal, group CEO at Flipkart and a
member of the ET Startup Awards jury . “They have checked all the boxes of how a
startup should scale without shortcuts. Food-tech needs such execution to prove
that this industry is viable. If Swiggy hadn't achieved this, there would have
been a big question mark on the food-tech space.“
That probably explains the
startup's lineup of marquee investors--Accel India, SAIF Partners, Bessemer
Venture Partners, Harmony Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Naspers.
On Swiggy's to-do list next
is expanding the size of its repeat-customer base--one that it regards as
sacrosanct.
Currently, Swiggy sees
repeat usage of about six orders per month per customer. The company is working
on a bunch of long-term and short-term initiatives to offer better
affordability and boost repeat orders by customers.
Jul
24 2017 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)
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