What do you do when you don’t feel like eating the “sabzi” your mom made? What do you do when you don’t feel like eating your mess food? We all just ‘Swiggy’ it, right? Although there is quite a few food delivery applications readily available to us now, the scenario wasn’t the same even a few years back. But, how did Swiggy come into existence? How did it become synonymous to food ordering?
BITS-Pilani alumni Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy were always passionate about kick-starting their own start-up. Finally, in 2013, they came up with a technology product called Bundl to connect courier companies across India. But, unfortunately, it wasn’t off to a great start and the duo had to shut shop very soon. It was after their courier tech fiasco that the duo understood they needed to venture into something more needed by the common public. That’s when they had the idea of the food-delivery business. Since none of them were good with the coding part, they roped in Rahul Jaimini, an IIT Kharagpur graduate.
In 2014, the start-up kicked off with six delivery executives and 25 restaurants on there in the upscale neighborhood of Bengaluru called Koramangala. Within a year, Swiggy expanded to 11 localities in Bengaluru and also opened the business in Gurgaon and Delhi. As their business expanded, the founders started putting more innovative thoughts into their model. They hired more delivery executives, partnered up with 300 restaurants within their functional area, and added more user-friendly features to the application. The same year Swiggy received its first funding of $2million from Accel and SAIF Partners and broadened its horizon to the other five big cities- Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, and Chennai.
As good as 2015 was in respect of the funding boom, it slowly died away the following year in 2016. But, Swiggy was on its own victory high. Singapore-based RB Investments and New York-based Harmony Partners invested a lump sum amount of $35 million in Swiggy. While other similar platforms struggled to keep up with the fast-growing pace of Swiggy, it kept on adding new features and extending. A new component called Swiggy express was launched along with the introduction of surge pricing in case of excessive rain, festivals, or national holidays.
With services like the Bowl Company, delivery till 2 a.m, and lucrative discounts, Swiggy was a huge hit among millennials. Students or young professionals no longer had to cry or grump about food. In 2018, Swiggy entered the prestigious club of Unicorns (start-ups valued at over 1 million). Today, Swiggy holds a record of 5 million monthly orders.
Although, Swiggy has not really been left out from its share of controversies and crisis, but it has made its mark in the start-up industry and how! With features like Swiggy Pop (orders of Rs.99-200 from local restaurants without any extra charges), Swiggy scheduled (one can schedule their order according to their time), Swiggy Super (a monthly subscription pack) and so much more Swiggy is here to stay.
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Swiggy success story
Baishali Banerjee is a part of the Class of 2020 of PG Programme in PR and Corporate Communications at SCoRe, Mumbai. She completed her winter internship with Genesis BCW, Mumbai.
She is from Kolkata. She did her graduation in Media Science with a specialization in Public Relations and Advertising from NSHM Knowledge Campus, Kolkata. She has always been curious about the corporate world and how all these huge brands function and connect with their consumers on a day-to-day basis. She interned with Ketchum Sampark for a period of three months under the Brands & Lifestyle team. This experience made her more curious about the PR fraternity. Also, she is a person very open to learning and her interests lie in corporate, entertainment and lifestyle.
She can be reached at @baishalibanerj5 on Twitter and as Baishali Banerjee on LinkedIn
