A Month of Cricketing Action Brings a Spurge Of 15-30% In Snacks and Desserts on Swiggy

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. This was further fueled by the ongoing cricketing season which has caused a surge in orders that are gradually touching pre-Covid values.

Orders surge with cricketing season

One month into the cricketing season, major cities are already reaching pre-Covid recovery values. Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad are the most active metro cities while Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Lucknow are the most active tier 2 cities this season.

Snacks and desserts have seen a 15-20% rise in the past month. Match viewing combos, especially Barbeques have also gained popularity during this season.  

Coming to the overall scenario in the online delivery space, below are some key highlights:

• As a market leader in food delivery, our pan India food delivery has recovered around 80-85% of pre-Covid order value. In many markets, it is at 95%, some even over 100%. Overall Swiggy has delivered over 100 million orders since the beginning of the lockdown.

• Almost 200+ cities have now reached 90% of their pre-Covid GMV levels with 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 consumer’s fears around the transmission of Covid through food slowly dissipate.

• Certain micro pockets within the country have also reached 200% of their pre-Covid value.

• Big food delivery markets such as Bangalore, 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%+ GMV levels.

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

• Kolkata, Kochi, Lucknow, Vizag, Guwahati, Mysore are performing the best and exceeding their pre-Covid levels (100-150%) due to the influx of the working population (online delivery regulars) into these cities.

Trends on the Restaurant Side

More than 7,000 new restaurants are being onboarded per month on Swiggy bringing the tally around around 3,000 more than pre-Covid.

Among these 6000 new restaurants are small and medium restaurants compared to 3,500 pre-Covid

• A five-fold increase per month in onboarding fine-dine restaurants for online deliveries has been noticed. 

• Occasions such as Raksha Bandhan and Ganesh Chaturthi, saw massive spikes in orders compared to the pre-Covid time ordering.

• The cricketing season is yet another celebration in India, connecting the nation virtually this year.  During the ongoing cricketing season, the Tier 2, 3 cities have performed exceptionally well recording a double-digit growth over the first weekend itself. Services have been made accessible  across 500 cities to serve the customers growing need.

• Safety took precedence during the pandemic and there was a 23% spike for orders from restaurants that had the “Best Safety Standards’ tag on the platform as compared to others.

• Families that live together, eat together: As the myth of Covid-19 transfer through food was busted by WHO and other authorities, there was a 2X increase in family orders in September compared to March.

Jumpstarting Our Partners for Delivery

The journey of regaining pre-Covid scale was enabled by various factors one of which was Swiggy’s Jumpstart Package aimed at aiding restaurant’s recovery and growth. In a span of 4 months, Swiggy supported over 50,000 restaurants, along with establishing safety and hygiene protocols, sharing training content on safety best practices, providing access to safety grade packaging material and kits at a subsidised rate, giving restaurants the option to regularly upload videos and images of the safety practices followed by them on the Swiggy app to help build trust among customers among others. Restaurants also got access to subsidized financing through the Swiggy Capital Assist program.

Below are some highlights on how Swiggy’s Jumpstart Package has been beneficial in helping restaurants to thrive during the pandemic:

• Over 15,000 restaurants have leveraged Jumpstart for the ‘Best Safety Standards’ tag and over 10,000 restaurants leveraged it for boosting their business

• A major reason for anxiety for most restaurateurs was the inability to pay salaries to their staff, also one of the major reasons for certain restaurants to shutter. To improve their cash flows around 30,000 restaurants that availed the Jumpstart Package opted for bi-weekly payments.

• Over 1,500 restaurants showed interest to avail loans through Swiggy Capital Assist, primarily to restart their business post lockdown and manage costs of raw materials, employee salaries, etc.

• Restaurants that availed the ‘Business Booster’ package were able to fast-track their recovery by 30-40%.

• In the first 45 days of the program, over 8,000 restaurants became serviceable with Jumpstart.

• Nearly 2,500 new restaurants benefited from the package.

• Close to 17,000 restaurants availed the package in tier 2 and 3 cities such as Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Nashik, and Vizag.

• Taking learnings from Jumpstart 1.0, we moved on to the next phase of the program which focused on restaurants that are top restaurants in their city and on Swiggy, widely loved by patrons not just for their delicious food but also its commitment to serving our consumers in order to help them reach sales pre-Covid order values.

As a key player in the ecosystem, Swiggy is experimenting to see what works the best for the industry and extending its support to uplift the restaurant ecosystem and bounce back to its former glory. Below are stories of some of our restaurant owners who were impacted just like their counterparts describing their journey of returning to normalcy by embracing the new normal in food delivery. We hope that other restaurant owners find these stories inspiring as well.

Restaurant Anecdotes for Jumpstart

Aminia, Kolkata

Aminia is a legendary restaurant in Kolkata, established in the year 1929, by Abdul Rahim, and is steeped in history and legacy. Most of the recent expansion has been brought about by the third and fourth generations of the family, keeping in mind the goals of their forefathers, which was to take the recipes all over the state and country. 

Aminia began its exclusive partnership with Swiggy over four years ago and saw the potential of a rising online consumer base. 

Pre-Covid Aminia used had jam-packed dining sales during weekends and festivals, along with their parcel and home delivery sales which were at great levels. With delivery platforms like Swiggy coming into the picture, personal deliveries were suspended primarily due to the ease and convenience of online ordering. Online sales accounted for nearly 30-40% of their total sales.

It was during to the pandemic, that Aminia signed up on the Swiggy jumpstart package, which helped them in  numerous ways. Beginning with being able to use the Swiggy hygiene carousels to inform customers about their stringent hygiene and safety protocols. Constant temperature checks along with safety and hygiene measures mandated by the WHO were uploaded for the restaurant on Swiggy through the Swiggy partner app. 

In return, Aminia received a ‘best safety restaurant’ badge on Swiggy, reassuring customers that it was safe to order from the restaurant, which directly boosted online sales.

To add to this, a guaranteed ROI driven marketing booster ensured visibility on the Swiggy app in a cost-effective way that boosted online impressions. Finally, Swiggy also provided data through which Aminia was able to launch food combos that were best suited to a post-Covid market. It was the first time that Aminia had ever sold combos. Combo sales added substantial revenue to our online sales.

Nandhini Deluxe, Bangalore

Nadhini Deluxe has been a prominent chain of restaurants specializing in Andhra cuisine for over 30 years now. They have been partners with Swiggy right from its entry in Andhra Pradesh. As has been the case with the industry, Covid impacted their sales and they were working with only 50% of their pre-Covid staff. They availed the jumpstart package when the situation started improving during Unlock 1.0. Considering the decades of experience, they have in the industry, they were proud of the strong procurement process they had in place.

 However, supply of raw materials and packaging was a major challenge in the initial phases, and this is where Swiggy helped them with driving the cost down for packaging and raw material and improving the speed of procurement. 

The business booster package improved their visibility significantly. These efforts have helped Nandhini Deluxe’s business pick up gradually and they are happy that Swiggy is taking the initiative to help restaurants reach business recovery.