Food and grocery delivery major Swiggy has been increasingly recruiting executives from e-commerce platforms such as Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon, as it looks to foray into more businesses and diversify revenue streams. At least a dozen senior executives from these companies have joined the IPO-bound company in the last year, underscoring the trend.
The revolving door
Just in the past four months or so, Swiggy has hired Shalabh Shrivastava (former Flipkart VP, now SVP of Driver Org at Swiggy), Hari Kumar G (former Flipkart VP, now Swiggy SVP and CBO for Swiggy Instamart), Amitesh Jha (former Flipkart SVP, now Swiggy Instamart CEO) and several other top executives who have cut their teeth in categories like furniture, electronics, fashion and others apart from groceries for several years.
Swiggy has especially gone after executives who have experience in non-grocery roles at a time when it is expanding assortment and looking to add high-value categories to improve its profit profile and push up average order values (AOVs). Swiggy has also piloted a professional services marketplace (Yello), tested a premium membership service called Rare and also begun offering 10-minute medicine deliveries, among others, as it expands operations.
All in on e-commerce
“We are going into a world where the category is changing. It was grocery alone, but it started to become grocery plus non-grocery. One advantage is that e-commerce has very deep categories. They have created a very strong talent pool over 16 years with the journey of e-commerce. There is a whole strong set of operators who have done category management of this type,” Swiggy Group CEO and co-founder Sriharsha Majety told Moneycontrol in an interview last week, responding to a broader question on the war for talent in the burgeoning quick commerce sector.
Swiggy has not just targeted top roles. The company has even poached junior and mid level employees, such as Manu Sasidharan (AVP at Swiggy), from the Walmart-owned company over the past months, per LinkedIn.
Companies like Flipkart have been around for over 15 years, with rich experience in building and scaling the ecommerce ecosystem in India, giving their executives the pedigree that other new-age companies want to tap into and leverage to scale new categories in a fast-evolving landscape.
In several cases, when team leaders leave a company, they hire previous colleagues at their new organisation and continue to work together which adds to the exodus. As it happens, Swiggy head of human resources, Girish Menon, had a brief stint at Flipkart before joining Swiggy in 2016.
To be sure, while Swiggy has been more proactive in poaching talent from Flipkart, it is not the only one tapping into the talent pool of the etailer. Rivals like Zomato, Blinkit, Zepto and others also have a similar playbook as the war for talent heats up.
Beyond Flipkart
While Flipkart appears to be Swiggy’s most preferred hunting ground, the Bengaluru-based company has gone after Amazon staffers, too.
Earlier this year, Swiggy roped in former More Retail employee Sairam Krishnamurthy as SVP and COO of its quick commerce arm, Instamart. More Retail is a joint venture between Amazon and Samara Capital.
Among other appointments, Swiggy also hired Anirban Roy as its VP earlier this year. Roy previously headed Performance Marketing at Amazon, where he spent over seven years.
“Some e-commerce companies only have incremental growth but a firm like Swiggy is transformative right now. It has everything going for it – an IPO, superb brand, money and everything else. All of that makes it easy to attract talent,” Kamal Karanth, co-founder of talent specialist firm Xpheno, said.
The top executives are given a hike of at least 50 percent while switching jobs which makes the offer even more lucrative. Also, a healthy ESOP package ahead of an IPO, like in the case of Swiggy, is too tempting to let go, per Karanth.
“Also remember, every company has its romantic phase which is very exciting – that is where Swiggy is right now and everyone wants to be part of it. When there is another company at a similar juncture like Swiggy, these executives will again switch jobs,” he added.
Swiggy’s wider ambitions
The move to beef up talent comes at a time when Swiggy is gearing up for a public market listing on October 13 in one of the most widely anticipated new-age tech IPOs in recent years. It will then join Gurugram-based rival Zomato which has been listed on the stock exchanges since 2021.
While Swiggy has focussed on a superapp strategy where all its offerings, such as food delivery, quick commerce, hyperlocal delivery, dining out and more, are all housed under one app, larger rival Zomato has opted to build out separate super brands like Blinkit (quick commerce), District (going out business) and Zomato (food delivery).
Swiggy’s e-commerce push is part of a wider trend in the quick commerce space where consumers want more than just groceries in 10-15 minutes. Swiggy’s rivals such as Blinkit, Flipkart Minutes, Tata BigBasket, Zepto and others have moved to add categories such as mobiles, electronics, apparel and cosmetics.
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