Friday, July 28, 2017

STARTUP SPECIAL....................... Startup of the Year Swiggy Hunger Takes Them to the Top

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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