COMPANY SPECIAL The metamorphosis
of Swiggy PART I
Using technology to be more precise in
predicting meal preparation times and to plan for delivery schedules
accordingly is the top priority at Swiggy now.
“Failing organizations are usually
over-managed and under-led,” famously warned American scholar and leadership
guru Warren Bennis.
Several decades later, his counsel appears prophetic in the context of the trials and tribulations of Indian startups walking the tightrope balancing founders on the one end and professional leaders on the other.
Barring a handful.
Among them is four-year-old Swiggy, India’s largest food delivery platform and among the quickest to cross the $1 billion valuation mark. Remarkable strides for a startup that ran without a chief operating officer, chief finance officer or head of engineering until about a year ago.
Suddenly, Swiggy’s founders, still in their early thirties, found themselves working with seasoned executives from traditional businesses on solving one of the most complex sectors in Indian logistics. It proved rewarding.
“There are only so many things that we know as high-energy founders with a certain vision for what we want to do,” said chief executive officer Sriharsha Majety, the 32-year-old BITS-Pilani and IIM-Calcutta alumnus. “The reality is we need help everywhere and a more complete team than just energy and hustle for us to be able to accomplish our objectives.”
But getting the apt wealth of experienced hands to match the hustle of the young trio of founders took several months.
The position of chief operating officer—the second-most important role at the growth-stage firm—was among the first C-suite positions to open up and the last to be filled, with the appointment of Procter & Gamble veteran Vivek Sunder in July. Sunder made the cut from among 100 people interviewed for the post.
Leaving a cushy global role at one of the world’s biggest consumer goods companies to join Swiggy must have been a tough decision, one would think. Not really, says Sunder, 44.
“The reality is that the interview was very interesting, in that it was very values-based,” recounted Sunder, explaining that other companies he had interviewed with typically focused on the functional role of a senior executive.
But not Swiggy.
“That was the least of the assessment. I actually had more interactions with the people who were going to report to me than I had with people I was going to report to. My leadership team, all those who are now working under mepretty much everyone—were interviewing me. I was, like, this is a bit bizarre... I will remember what he said to me because later on, if I do clear this, I am going to be your boss,” Sunder joked.
Swiggy’s values are visible soon as you walk into the rather bare, white-walled, stripped down office at Bangalore’s Bannerghatta Road that seats 700 of its 4,000-strong workforce. Hanging on the wall is Swiggy’s big board of values—highlighting customers right on top, followed by humility, transparency, honesty, and the ability to disagree.
Not every senior employee at Swiggy has had to go through the test of ‘team’. For its head of engineering, Dale Vaz, the seamlessness of Swiggy’s customer focus was signal enough to make the decision to quit the world’s largest retailer, Amazon, after over a decade there and hop onto what he believes is the next wave—the on-demand consumption and hyper-local market.
“During the time when I was trying to decide on whether to stay back at Amazon or move to Swiggy, I had to meet my 25-member Amazon team over a presentation in Delhi. During lunch, the team ordered food from the mall across the office through Swiggy. The delivery executive couldn’t carry 25 boxes of food on his bike,” said Vaz, 39. “The Swiggy team intercepted the vast incoming order and arranged for the delivery person to take all the boxes of food in a trolley and he literally wheeled that across the road… (that) showed what a customer obsessed company this is.”
It is this technology that Vaz is looking to strengthen by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning for customer experience, delivery, and restaurant partner experience. Using technology to be more precise in predicting meal preparation times and to plan for delivery schedules accordingly is the top priority at Swiggy now.
“How do we keep getting deliveries to move faster? We used to average 37-38 minutes; we have shaved that off by 5 more minutes. Can we shave that off by another 10 minutes is something we are asking now,” said Majety.
When it comes to the firm’s values, transparency around people’s roles and ideas is paramount and is not restricted to senior leadership.
“When Vivek (Sunder) joined, he sent all of us an email on how he expects the communication and flow of work to be done, communicated very clearly. That really helped avoid any friction, especially due to any change in reporting roles for some of the employees,” said an employee who has been with Swiggy for over a year.
Transparency on the investment table as well has helped Swiggy tide through some tough times over the past 18 months as the competition intensified.
“During the hiring process, we were very open about some of the areas of focus and what it means to join a startup,” said Sumer Juneja, director at Norwest Venture Partners India and one of the earliest members on Swiggy’s board of directors. “Discussing areas like delivery agents’ attrition levels helped, because Vivek (Sunder) was able to identify with similar challenges of churn amongst sales executives in offline retail, and, together, we could all work on possible solutions for this.”
Such transparency is not a recent phenomenon at Swiggy. While NVP was finalising its investment in Swiggy in 2015, Juneja accompanied delivery executives on their bikes to check on Swiggy’s customer care and delivery efficacy as part of the due diligence process.
Last year, the firm found itself in a sticky situation after an anonymous blog post supposedly written by former employees alleged that Swiggy had fudged numbers. Majety responded with the same sense of transparency, publicly and internally dispelling one allegation at a time.
“Sriharsha sent an email to all employees clarifying that the allegations were a hoax and stating that anyone who had any doubts was free to get it clarified by the CEO himself,” reminisced an employee who has been with the firm for over 2 years now. “At the next town hall, the incident found just a fleeting mention by Majety. It was barely an issue. Just business as usual.”
In a capital-intensive industry such as delivery, spending to gain market share while also improving unit economics is a tough ask.
Several decades later, his counsel appears prophetic in the context of the trials and tribulations of Indian startups walking the tightrope balancing founders on the one end and professional leaders on the other.
Barring a handful.
Among them is four-year-old Swiggy, India’s largest food delivery platform and among the quickest to cross the $1 billion valuation mark. Remarkable strides for a startup that ran without a chief operating officer, chief finance officer or head of engineering until about a year ago.
Suddenly, Swiggy’s founders, still in their early thirties, found themselves working with seasoned executives from traditional businesses on solving one of the most complex sectors in Indian logistics. It proved rewarding.
“There are only so many things that we know as high-energy founders with a certain vision for what we want to do,” said chief executive officer Sriharsha Majety, the 32-year-old BITS-Pilani and IIM-Calcutta alumnus. “The reality is we need help everywhere and a more complete team than just energy and hustle for us to be able to accomplish our objectives.”
But getting the apt wealth of experienced hands to match the hustle of the young trio of founders took several months.
The position of chief operating officer—the second-most important role at the growth-stage firm—was among the first C-suite positions to open up and the last to be filled, with the appointment of Procter & Gamble veteran Vivek Sunder in July. Sunder made the cut from among 100 people interviewed for the post.
Leaving a cushy global role at one of the world’s biggest consumer goods companies to join Swiggy must have been a tough decision, one would think. Not really, says Sunder, 44.
“The reality is that the interview was very interesting, in that it was very values-based,” recounted Sunder, explaining that other companies he had interviewed with typically focused on the functional role of a senior executive.
But not Swiggy.
“That was the least of the assessment. I actually had more interactions with the people who were going to report to me than I had with people I was going to report to. My leadership team, all those who are now working under mepretty much everyone—were interviewing me. I was, like, this is a bit bizarre... I will remember what he said to me because later on, if I do clear this, I am going to be your boss,” Sunder joked.
Swiggy’s values are visible soon as you walk into the rather bare, white-walled, stripped down office at Bangalore’s Bannerghatta Road that seats 700 of its 4,000-strong workforce. Hanging on the wall is Swiggy’s big board of values—highlighting customers right on top, followed by humility, transparency, honesty, and the ability to disagree.
Not every senior employee at Swiggy has had to go through the test of ‘team’. For its head of engineering, Dale Vaz, the seamlessness of Swiggy’s customer focus was signal enough to make the decision to quit the world’s largest retailer, Amazon, after over a decade there and hop onto what he believes is the next wave—the on-demand consumption and hyper-local market.
“During the time when I was trying to decide on whether to stay back at Amazon or move to Swiggy, I had to meet my 25-member Amazon team over a presentation in Delhi. During lunch, the team ordered food from the mall across the office through Swiggy. The delivery executive couldn’t carry 25 boxes of food on his bike,” said Vaz, 39. “The Swiggy team intercepted the vast incoming order and arranged for the delivery person to take all the boxes of food in a trolley and he literally wheeled that across the road… (that) showed what a customer obsessed company this is.”
It is this technology that Vaz is looking to strengthen by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning for customer experience, delivery, and restaurant partner experience. Using technology to be more precise in predicting meal preparation times and to plan for delivery schedules accordingly is the top priority at Swiggy now.
“How do we keep getting deliveries to move faster? We used to average 37-38 minutes; we have shaved that off by 5 more minutes. Can we shave that off by another 10 minutes is something we are asking now,” said Majety.
When it comes to the firm’s values, transparency around people’s roles and ideas is paramount and is not restricted to senior leadership.
“When Vivek (Sunder) joined, he sent all of us an email on how he expects the communication and flow of work to be done, communicated very clearly. That really helped avoid any friction, especially due to any change in reporting roles for some of the employees,” said an employee who has been with Swiggy for over a year.
Transparency on the investment table as well has helped Swiggy tide through some tough times over the past 18 months as the competition intensified.
“During the hiring process, we were very open about some of the areas of focus and what it means to join a startup,” said Sumer Juneja, director at Norwest Venture Partners India and one of the earliest members on Swiggy’s board of directors. “Discussing areas like delivery agents’ attrition levels helped, because Vivek (Sunder) was able to identify with similar challenges of churn amongst sales executives in offline retail, and, together, we could all work on possible solutions for this.”
Such transparency is not a recent phenomenon at Swiggy. While NVP was finalising its investment in Swiggy in 2015, Juneja accompanied delivery executives on their bikes to check on Swiggy’s customer care and delivery efficacy as part of the due diligence process.
Last year, the firm found itself in a sticky situation after an anonymous blog post supposedly written by former employees alleged that Swiggy had fudged numbers. Majety responded with the same sense of transparency, publicly and internally dispelling one allegation at a time.
“Sriharsha sent an email to all employees clarifying that the allegations were a hoax and stating that anyone who had any doubts was free to get it clarified by the CEO himself,” reminisced an employee who has been with the firm for over 2 years now. “At the next town hall, the incident found just a fleeting mention by Majety. It was barely an issue. Just business as usual.”
In a capital-intensive industry such as delivery, spending to gain market share while also improving unit economics is a tough ask.
Supraja Srinivasan
ET Bureau21SEP18
https://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/startups/using-technology-to-predict-meal-preparation-delivery-schedules-top-priority-at-swiggy-now/65895605
No comments:
Post a Comment