- Swiggy claims that it has 43 biryani orders per minute, while Domino’s, Burger King and McDonald’s lead the orders number.
- Swiggy is in Series H funding where they raised $1 billion from Naspers last year in December.
The leader in food delivery market Swiggy turns 5 today. It has come a long way since its inception in 2014. Founded by Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy, and Rahul Jaimini, the food aggregator had in 2018 become one of India’s fastest unicorns.
On the 5th birthday of the startup let’s look at the journey of the startup-
Founded in 2014 by Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy, and Rahul Jaimini, Swiggy became one of the fastest unicorns in India beating the time taken of 6 years by Flipkart.
Swiggy entered the billion-dollar club in 2018 within 4 years of its operation.
When Swiggy entered the market space, it was considered a late entrant and the market of food delivery was considered very cluttered and unattractive back then. Then food-tech leader Zomato decided not to enter the messy food logistics business, but Swiggy’s entry in the scene forced Zomato to put a lot of money in the delivery of food as they try to catch up with the startup which pretty much sits on top of the online food delivering business.
It is one of the few startups from the 2014-15 hyper funding wave which was supposed to give birth to dozens of successful companies and a bunch of Unicorns. But when the dust settled, the startup came out as the lone survivor. On the way, it has beaten its competition such as FoodPanda, Zomato.
The success of Swiggy is an indicator of the trend where companies which focus on the value chain of customers have won over the pure marketplaces.
The startup started out at a time when having an application for your startup considered cool rather than focusing on the strong supply chain network. Swiggy since the start focused on one thing, that was to build an extensive logistics chain. Flipkart did the mistake of cutting their logistics operation which they rectified later on.
Founders of Swiggy.
Source- Swiggy.
Before founding Swiggy, Harsha and Nandan had already explored the horizons of logistics in India with their startup Bundl which aimed to connect courier companies across India and help them coordinate with each other while delivering goods for small and medium businesses.
They realized much more opportunity in the food delivery space.
The main reason behind the success of Swiggy is the founders of the startup invested in building a proper logistics network with a huge fleet of their delivery boys and technology to back them. Along with this what they valued was customer experience.
Swiggy also focused on cashing the big sports events such as IPL and Cricket World Cup with exciting offers.
Source- Swiggy
Currently, the startup is in Series H funding where they raised $1 billion from Naspers last year in December. It has gone from 6 delivery partners in one city to 2,00,000 in 29 cities. The startup which also started delivering groceries has added 240 cities just in 2019 so far.
It also claims that it has 43 biryani orders per minute, while Domino’s, Burger King and McDonald’s lead the orders number.
Learning for upcoming internet startups Swiggy certainly is paving way for more innovation in the market. Team Next Big Brand wishes Happy Birthday and Good Wishes to Swiggy.
