Swiggy says food delivery at 85 pc of pre-COVID value

NEW DELHI: Food ordering platform Swiggy on Thursday said its pan-India food delivery has recovered to around 80-85 per cent of pre-COVID-19 order value.

"Starting with the unlock phases slowly and steadily more and more restaurants opened their kitchens to satisfy the needs of crores of consumers who were placing orders online," Swiggy said in a statement.

This was further fuelled by the ongoing cricketing season which has caused a surge in orders that are gradually touching pre-COVID values, it added.

"Our pan India food delivery has recovered around 80-85 per cent of pre-COVID order value. In many markets, it is at 95 per cent, some even over 100 per cent. Overall Swiggy has delivered over 100 million orders since the beginning of the lockdown," it said.

Almost over 200 cities have now reached 90 per cent of their pre-COVID gross merchandise value (GMV) levels, with more than 70 cities seeing a full recovery to their pre-COVID levels.

They have seen double-digit growth over the past month as the unlock progressed and consumers' fears around the transmission of COVID-19 infection through food slowly dissipate, it added.

"Big food delivery markets such as Bengaluru, Chennai are seeing very fast recovery, however, due to a lot of the customer migration from these metros into Tier 2, 3+ cities, they have reached their 80 per cent plus GMV levels," Swiggy said.

 With offices resuming operations, "we can expect the working population to migrate back to the metros in the near future and reach full recovery," it added.

Kolkata, Kochi, Lucknow, Visakhapatnam, Guwahati and Mysore are performing the best and exceeding their pre-COVID levels due to the influx of working population into these cities, the statement said.