Food and grocery delivery platform Swiggy has unveiled a new app, SNACC, promising delivery of quick bites, beverages and meals in 15 minutes. The launch comes amid heightened competition in the food delivery sector, with both incumbents and new entrants ramping up offerings to cater to the evolving tastes of Indian consumers.
The company has so far housed all its offerings, food delivery, quick commerce, hyperlocal delivery, dining out, under one main app.
From Blinkit’s Bistro to Zepto Cafe and Swish, large and small players are all doubling down on the space as an increasing number of users warm up to the idea of rapid food delivery. A host of companies, especially quick commerce platforms like Zomato-owned Blinkit and Zepto, are launching separate apps for food delivery and other use cases to differentiate their offerings and go after a wider customer base.
Moneycontrol has viewed the app and its offerings. SNACC, with a bright fluorescent green background and a dark blue text font, went live on January 7, in select parts of Bengaluru, the company’s home turf. Swiggy will expand to other regions and scale up the offering to other parts of the country, sources said.
Swiggy Snacc's homepage which Moneycontrol has viewed
Snacc’s landing page displays a menu in categories such as Indian Breakfast, Coffee, Bakes, Cold Beverages, Eggs and Protein. While it has tied up with brands such as Blue Tokai and The Whole Truth in some sub-categories, the rest of them are unbranded and are sourced from third-party food providers.
The app and offerings are learnt to have been conceptualised only around mid-December, which essentially means the services have gone live in less than a month.
The launch of Snacc comes after Swiggy tasted success with Bolt. Bolt is Swiggy’s rapid food delivery arm which fulfills orders in 15 minutes. It only enlists eateries that have the capabilities of completing orders within a fixed timeline. Snacc, on the other hand, currently delivers from a centralised location that has different products in stock.
Swiggy will expand to other regions and scale up the offering to other parts of the country, sources said.
It is possible that the model evolves as the offering scales.
Swiggy did not offer comments for this story.
Red hot 15-minute food delivery
While 15-minute food delivery may have been an idea among q-commerce companies, few saw it occupying the centre stage this quickly. One can draw parallels between q-commerce and 15-minute food delivery. Both the services have gone from ‘who needs this?’ to ‘we must also launch this’ in a span of a few months, or maybe a year at the most, Moneycontrol had reported earlier.
Swiggy launched its own 10-minute food delivery service Bolt, in addition to Instacafe, in early October. The service first started in six cities and eventually expanded to over 400. Now, within eight weeks of the launch, Bolt accounted for five per cent of Swiggy’s total food delivery orders during the July-September period, the firm had said during its earnings call earlier this month.
But, what is driving demand?
“There are many times when you can't plan your life around 30 to 40-minute food deliveries. If you're, for example, taking off for your office commute in 20 minutes, you feel like you want to get a coffee, maybe you can't do that. If you're in between meetings at the office and you forgot to get your lunch, you only have a 20-30-minute break, you can't plan your life around it,” Sriharsha Majety, co-founder and group CEO, Swiggy explained to Moneycontrol in an interview earlier.
“That's how the first incidence of usage will begin. But once people get used to it, there's no going back. That's what we've seen in quick commerce as well,” he added.
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