Swish, a 10-min food delivery startup, settles for smaller fundraise even as market heats up

Since Swish was founded in May 2024, large players have become more prominent in the space, especially in the last few weeks.

Accel-backed Swish, a startup that delivers food in 10 minutes, is in talks to raise $7-8 million (Rs 60-68 crore) in a fresh round from the UK-based Hara Global, people familiar with the development told Moneycontrol. It is also likely that Accel, an existing investor, will participate in the round and retain its stake in the rapid delivery company.

While $7-8 million will be nearly four times that of the $2 million that Swish had raised in its seed round last November, it is much less than what the company had initially planned to raise, sources said.

Swish and Hara Global did not reply to Moneycontrol’s queries.

The Bengaluru-based company had discussed a round as large as $15-20 million (Rs 130-170 crore) with Elevation Capital, and other large venture capital firms, a few weeks ago, but those talks have not materialised primarily due to fears that larger players will eventually corner a larger market share, one of the persons cited above told Moneycontrol.

Both Accel and Elevation Capital are early backers of Swiggy, now one of the largest players in the 10 to 15-minute food delivery space, which operates Bolt and Snacc.

In addition to Snacc and Bolt, Zomato, Zepto Cafe, Bistro by Blinkit are also large and compete in the 15-minute food delivery space. At the same time, other companies such as BigBasket, are preparing to enter the arena in a move that will further intensify the competition and divide the market share between more players.

Large players toying with the idea of rapid delivery of food and tasting initial success in the industry will give these well-funded companies an edge over the others which essentially means the smaller startups, that do not have deep pockets or large investor backing, will tend to lose out.

Swish is negotiating a smaller round despite being an early mover.

A partner at a large venture capital firm had earlier told Moneycontrol that Swish was the company that spotted the 10-minute food delivery opportunity. “You must give a little credit to Swish. It is the trigger for everyone tripling down on 15-minute food deliveries,” the partner had said.

He was, however, quick to add that Swish needs to executive extremely well “otherwise what moat will Swish have when compared with Swiggy (Snacc/Bolt), Blinkit’s Bistro or even Zepto Cafe?”

Since Swish was founded in May 2024, large players have become more prominent in the space, especially in the last few weeks.

For instance, Zepto co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha said Zepto Cafe was clocking 30,000 orders each day in December and that has grown 60 percent month-on-month (MoM) to 50,000 a day.

The demand for rapid delivery of food is high.

In just a few weeks since being launched, the Zepto Cafe app has over 1 million downloads which compares with more than 70,000 downloads of Blinkit’s Bistro. Swiggy’s Snacc has around 10,000-14,000 downloads, cumulative data across app store and play store on Android and iOS showed.

Swish, on the other hand, has total app downloads of 50,000-55,000 since being founded eight months ago. Swish’s downloads may seem lesser because it is concentrated only in a few areas of Bengaluru and is yet to fully expand.

While a clear winner is yet to emerge, analysts had concluded that rapid food delivery will be a good value add for existing giants like Swiggy and Zomato which will have an edge over others as they have dabbled in the space for longer.