Swiggy to launch Instamart as separate app, eyes multi-app strategy on quick commerce boom

Moneycontrol was first to report on Swiggy's 15 minute food delivery app, Snacc, which went live in Bengaluru this week.

Food and grocery delivery platform Swiggy will launch its quick commerce offering Instamart as a separate app, as it looks to build an multi-app strategy in step with evolving customer preferences, group CEO and co-founder Sriharsha Majety told Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview.

To be sure, Instamart will continue to be present on the main Swiggy app. The company is launching a separate app as it also looks to go after customers only looking for a particular offering. This approach mirrors strategies adopted by Chinese internet giants like Meituan and Alibaba, which combine a unified app with a suite of standalone apps tailored to specific use cases.

Meituan is an investor in Swiggy.

“We are in an uncharted territory and we are taking a zero-based view of the market. The Swiggy app continues to see very strong effects of cross-pollination with an integrated membership programme, card, etc. But Instamart has potential to be much larger in terms of user base and become bigger than food delivery,” Swiggy co-founder and group CEO Sriharsha Majety told Moneycontrol on January 9.

Majety added that Swiggy building multiple apps isn’t necessarily a new strategy. “We have never called ourselves a superapp. We had Supr Daily, Insanely Good, Dineout as separate apps in the past and are building on that strategy," he said.

Swiggy’s move to launch Instamart separately comes a day after Moneycontrol was first to report on its 15-minute food delivery app, Snacc, which went live in Bengaluru this week.

A separate Instamart app will go live in a few weeks. Asked on the rationale, Majety said: "During the initial years, we did not imagine a world beyond 150 million users. Now, we're looking at even 300 and 500 million users, thanks to quick commerce."

The realities have changed, as per Majety.

"Instamart is now in 75 cities and in new categories. As we add category, stuff is selling more and more so. But we're only 5-10 percent done, even for the quick commerce category. If quick commerce is going to be even larger than the food delivery business in terms of user base, we want to learn early on at 5-10 percent stage itself," he added.

Even as the company plans separate apps, the efforts to increase customer recall, per Majety will not change significantly.

"We are hardly breaking any new ground in this decision. There are so many templates, companies, and it (a separate app launch) is not like a wildly new experience. It is the instrument, the same instrument that consumers know in a sector. It is not that much of a new challenge," Majety said.

More apps

While Swiggy has said Snacc, Instamart and Dineout will be different apps, they will also continue to exist with the main app. In addition to these four apps, Swiggy is also set to launch Pyng and another app for Rare, sources told Moneycontrol.

"Rare being a separate app is understandable as has a very niche audience base, which will be a fraction of the overall Swiggy user pool," a person aware of the developments told Moneycontrol.

Pyng is Swiggy's latest launch where it will have offer curated professional services like yoga instructors, CAs and more. Pyng was intially being referred to as Yello but Swiggy has decided to rebrand the offering.

Pyng is similar to Justdial but with a more focused approach.

The launches come at a time when rivals such as Zomato-owned Blinkit and Zepto have also announced different apps for new offerings. While Gurugram-based Blinkit launched Bistro, Zepto announced Zepto Cafe. 

Even as different players adopt different strategies, experts and industry stakeholders have said there is no clear indication that one approach works better than the other.

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