Food tech platform Swiggy has expanded its grocery delivery service Instamart to five more cities in India, with a commitment to deliver essentials in 15-30 minutes, as it seeks to double down on the fast-growing quick commerce segment.
This is the first major expansion after Instamart launched in Bengaluru and Gurugram last year. Interestingly, Zomato-backed Grofers recently said it enabled 15-minute express delivery for 7,000 households in Gurugram.
Moneycontrol learns that in addition to Bengaluru and Gurugram, Swiggy has launched its Instamart in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Noida, promising deliveries in 15-30 minutes, as it ups the ante in the express delivery segment. A Swiggy spokesperson did not comment on its new plans.
In an interaction with Moneycontrol, last month, Swiggy's founder and CEO Sriharsha Majety spoke about the company's ambitions to expand into breakout areas such as grocery and meat delivery.
The company which closed a $1.25 billion funding round, its biggest till date, in a round led by Softbank is targeting the urban convenience segment in a big way and expects it to be the next major thing in 10-15 years.
"The most significant part of our investments will be into growing our non-food bets like Instamart where we see huge opportunities existing," Majety had said then.
"Even as we speak right now from being a small dot on the radar, our non-food revenues are close to a quarter of our overall revenues. Food delivery is also going to grow strongly. As we go into the next few years, we will look to build on it and go increase the share of the non-food bets also. We have Instamart, Genie, the meats vertical," Majety said,
It said it will use the money to grow its core food delivery business and invest aggressively in its promising instant grocery delivery business Instamart and its pick up and drop service, Swiggy Genie.
It expects the total addressable market for convenience to grow to 500 million users in the next decade, as the Indian middle class expands and more people order food and groceries online. Swiggy said the investment will further accelerate its strategy of growing its core food delivery business and building new food and non-food adjacencies in 2021 and beyond.
Swiggy in addition to food delivery is also betting big on its hyperlocal delivery service Swiggy Genie, where it competes with Dunzo, Flipkart, Amazon, and its online grocery service Instamart, where it's up against players such as Flipkart, Amazon, Tata-owned BigBasket, JioMart, and Grofers, which counts SoftBank and Zomato as investors.
Interestingly, after Zomato’s stellar share listing, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son believes that food delivery firm Swiggy could have a good listing if the company decides to go public at some point.
“If they (Swiggy) go public, I believe that we will be able to see good returns from here too. That’s our expectation,” SoftBank CEO Son said in an earnings presentation on August 10.
Son’s presentation also revealed that Swiggy has over 20 million monthly users, and does 1.5 million orders a day as of June this year. Its orders have grown 2.5 times, while revenue has grown 2.8 times from June 2020 to June 2021.
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