It looks like Swiggy is adding popular restaurants for its users whether it is in their vicinity or not, to gain an edge over players like UberEATS, Zomato, and also now Ola-owned Foodpanda India. We spotted in Mumbai that Swiggy added a new feature of ‘far away delivery’ where it offers to deliver food from outlets which are away from the delivery location by charging a fee.
For instance, it has a delivery option for Goregaon West, Mumbai from restaurants in Malad or Lokhandwala, with a delivery fee of Rs 20. These restaurants were around 3.4 km and 5.9 km from the delivery address.
Both the restaurants were not available for delivery at the location on Zomato. Remember, Zomato delivers food from only restaurants which are in the vicinity of the delivery area. Similarly for UberEATs and Foodpanda.
It is unclear if this option is available in selected cities or localities, or if Swiggy plans to expand it. We have reached out to Swiggy, to get more information on this feature, and we will update as soon as we hear back from them.
Food delivery space in India
The food delivery segment in India is seeing a lot of action off lately, and it has become food delivery players in the country to have their own edge in the market. Not only Indian, but global companies are looking to test their waters in India. London-based online food delivery company Deliveroo is reportedly looking to open its shop in India.
Cab aggregator Ola bought Foodpanda India from its Germany-based parent Delivery Hero Group and said that it will invest $200 million into the Foodpanda India business.
US-based cab aggregator Uber has already started its food delivery service UberEATS in India with Mumbai in June 2017, and now it is available in Gurgaon, Bangalore, Chennai, Chandigarh, Delhi, and Hyderabad.
Zomato, which started as a restaurant listing platform, entered online ordering service back in March 2015 and started focusing in this space. For the month of July 2017, Zomato surpassed 3 million online orders, also reported food ordering revenues of $9 million for the financial year ended 31st March 2017 (FY17), around 8 times of FY16. Zomato’s food delivery is currently live in 15 cities in India.
Whereas Swiggy, which was founded in August 2014 is currently available in 8 cities. Swiggy said in a statement that it has about 20, 000 restaurant partners live on its platform. Also, ahead of Zomato with Swiggy surpassed 4 million orders for the month of July. Swiggy’s spokesperson said that the company registred 4x growth in order volumes for financial year 2016-17, and saw 500% increase in revenue for the said FY.
